NEITHER WAR NOR NOT WAR

Army Command in Europe 

During the Time of Peace Operations:

Tasks Confronting USAREUR 

Commanders, 1994-2000

Richard M. Swain

May 2003
ii

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ISBN 1-58487-130-X
iii

CONTENTS

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Map of Bosnia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii 

1. Introduction: An Incident in Drvar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 

2. Last CINCUSAREUR: Service Component Commander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 

3. The USAREUR Road to Bosnia . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 

4. “Now I Have Three Masters”: LANDCENT to IFOR, February to December 1996 . . . . . . . . . . .79

5. SFOR Begins: December 1996 to July 1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

6. Offensive 1997: Peacekeeping to Protectorate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

7. Stalemate and Crisis with FRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

8. Self-Analysis: Intellectual Warfare and the Battle of Ideas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

9. Transition: New World—New Tricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 

10. War in the Balkans and Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

11. First Post-Bosnia Commander at USAREUR, 1998-2000. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

12. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

v

FOREWORD

With the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the U.S. Army has again demonstrated its 

prowess at warfighting. But while the two wars against Iraq have gained the most attention for 

the Army, its ability to undertake complex less-than-war missions is equally important for the 

promotion of U.S. national interests.

To a large extent, the Army developed its skill at tasks like peace operations “on the fly” in 

the 1990s when it was committed to places like Somalia and, most importantly, the Balkans. As 

with any new endeavor, mistakes were made, but most were quickly corrected. By the turn of 

the 21st century, the Army had developed impressive skill at large, complex peace operations.

Dr. Richard Swain’s study, Neither War Nor Not War, is a seminal contribution to the analysis 

of the Army’s role in the Balkans. His mission was to analyze the Bosnia peace operation from 

the perspective of U.S. military leaders. To do this, Dr. Swain collected an immense amount of 

primary source material, much of it unavailable to other analysts. The result is a work that will 

be of interest to both scholars and military leaders.

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this groundbreaking study to help leaders 

better understand the Army’s role in complex peace operations.

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 

vii

PREFACE

In February 1999, I was invited to give up secure but increasingly administrative 

employment at the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies1 in order to undertake an 

examination of leadership in peace operations focused on the command of the North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia. The notion was that this 

was a new and unique sort of problem to confront US Army officers, albeit one likely to recur 

in the unsettled environment left after the breakup of the old bipolar Cold War world. Two 

successive commanders in Bosnia, Generals Eric Shinseki and Montgomery Meigs, believed it 

was useful for the Army to document the nature of the leadership challenge that confronted 

senior officers in Bosnia. My own interest stemmed from a belief that peace operations were a 

challenge which, if not new to the US Army, were at least novel to the generation that had grown 

up with the certainties of the Cold War. I was troubled by the fact that too many senior Army 

leaders, at least those passing through Fort Leavenworth, seemed to find assignment of the task 

somehow improper. Several seemed to believe that Title 10’s mandate for organizing, training, 

and equipping Army forces “for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations on land” 

somehow was in conflict with their employment supporting national policies and implementing 

national objectives, which they surely were in Bosnia.2 Since I had read Title 10, particularly 

the passages expressing the intent of Congress in creating an army, and because I believed the 

Bosnia mission was one likely to recur, I concluded that the study could be of use to the officers 

trained at Leavenworth and elsewhere. 

Also, the task appealed to me because it involved roles and missions assigned the Army 

service component commanders in Europe. Since writing a book about Third Army in the Gulf 

War,3 I have been convinced that the service component is the Army’s least understood echelon 

of command. I welcomed what I saw as an opportunity to try once again to cast some light on 

an important part of Army and joint structure. Thus, without a great deal of hesitation, I threw 

up my old job and set off for Europe to learn about SFOR Command in Bosnia. The title of 

the study, Neither War Nor Not War, is the most apt description I could think of to describe the 

condition of postwar Bosnia where the struggle for partition continued long after the silencing 

of the big guns.

When I met with General Montgomery Meigs in Sarajevo in February 1999, I told him that, 

as I was a historian, whatever I produced would look a great deal like a narrative history, albeit 

one focused on a fairly narrow topic. I told him it would take 2 years. This study, produced in 

the months since, is thus a narrative examination of the challenges confronting the commanders 

of United States Army Europe (USAREUR) and SFOR during the periods 1994-2000, and 1996-

99, respectively. It is a forensic study of leadership based on the premise that leadership is what 

leaders do. This is not a history of SFOR as a whole, and certainly it is not a history of the entire 

international effort in Bosnia. For the most part, it does not involve itself in tactical actions, 

which are the business of the NATO-led multinational divisions. Rather, it focuses on the men 

at the center, the operational commanders and their challenges, relationships, and responses 

as they organized and directed the headquarters and the tactical and functional elements to 

accomplish the USAREUR and SFOR missions.

This approach has a number of limitations: of focus, sources, and coverage. First of all, the 

focus is very narrow. It has almost nothing to say about the first days of Intervention Force 

(IFOR) in Bosnia. It does not address the leadership problems experienced at the divisional level 

in Bosnia, nor does it treat adequately the civilian implementation leaders in Bosnia as a set of 

independent actors engaged in a common endeavor. 

The study is built on examination of four large collections of unprocessed documents and 
viii

the wide variety of public documents available on the Internet. The first set of records are 

the papers collected by the USAREUR Commander’s Initiatives Groups that served Generals 

William Crouch, Eric Shinseki, and Montgomery Meigs while each was posted as Commander 

Stabilization Force (COMSFOR) and while each served as Commander, USAREUR. 

The Commander’s Initiatives Group was originally a small body of lieutenant colonels, 

working as personal staff officers under supervision of a colonel, in the USAREUR Command 

Group. Generals Crouch and Shinseki, using their parallel US role as Commander, USAREUR, 

sometimes employed this group of officers (and other USAREUR staff officers) as an in-house 

instrument to think candidly about NATO issues without the inhibitions and sensitivities 

associated with a multinational forum. General Crouch eventually dispensed with his US 

initiatives group in Sarajevo. General Shinseki maintained separate US and NATO initiatives 

groups at SFOR. General Meigs sent the US group back to Heidelberg and dispensed with the 

NATO group when he assumed command from Shinseki. Many US Commander’s Initiatives 

Group files were transmitted to the USAREUR History Office during the conduct of this study. 

It is anticipated they will be retired ultimately at the Army’s Military History Institute at Carlisle 

Barracks, PA.

The second collection of unprocessed records is the SFOR Commander’s Files, maintained by 

the US-manned administrative section of the Office of the Commander in Sarajevo. References 

are to the location of the files at the time they were examined. The collection was left in Sarajevo 

and presumably will be retired through the SFOR History Office to SHAPE. Copies of these 

records for the period 1998 and 1999 were made for return to USAREUR upon transfer of SFOR 

command from General Meigs to his successor, US Lieutenant General Ron Adams. Adams 

was the first COMSFOR who was not also USAREUR Commander. The internal organization of 

these copies was jumbled somewhat during their physical transit to Heidelberg. They are also 

held in the USAREUR History Office.

The third group of records consists of those current files retained for General Meigs in the 

Commander’s and Secretary of the General Staff’s (SGS) Offices in USAREUR Headquarters 

after Meigs removed his flag to Heidelberg. The fourth set comprise the various command 

records already archived in the USAREUR History Office.

The final sets of records employed to write this report are those public records recorded on 

the Internet by the principal agencies involved in Dayton implementation and other public and 

private agencies interested in the region. Because the international leadership in Bosnia decided 

on a policy of transparency, the agencies they head have had a policy of publishing a wide 

variety of public documents on the Internet. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) site is 

particularly valuable in this regard and in recent years has included précis of the local press as 

an added feature. Transcripts of the international joint press conferences are available on-line 

from the SFOR Informer web site all the way back to the first IFOR press conference on 1 January 

1996. These electronic resources are priceless assets to anyone trying to follow the development 

of affairs in the Balkans. Their preservation is a critical challenge to historians.

Interviews and discussions with key observers have supplemented study of records. I have 

enjoyed the opportunity to meet with General Meigs almost monthly from February 1999 to 

completion of this manuscript. I was afforded the opportunity to meet with my West Point 

and US Command and General Staff College (CGSC) classmate, General Wesley K. Clark, in 

his office in Mons and his predecessor as SACEUR, General George Joulwan, in Joulwan’s 

home in Virginia. I met with General Crouch at Fort Leavenworth while he was in town with 

the Battle Command Training Program. I met with General Crouch’s Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Operations, Lieutenant General Dan Petrosky, while Petrosky was CG Eighth Army in Korea 

and Chief of Staff US Forces Korea, etc. I met with Major General Larry Lust, General Crouch’s 

Deputy Commander for Logistics, at Headquarters, European Command (EUCOM). I found 
ix

Major General Larry Dodgen, formerly the chief of General Crouch’s Initiatives Group, in 

Washington, DC. Lieutenant General Jack Nix retired in Kansas City. He shared his reflections 

both on Bosnia and his time as Commander of Southern European Task Force (SETAF). Major 

General K. J. Drewienkiewicz, CB, late of the Royal Engineers, and General Crouch’s Chief of 

Staff at Headquarters, Allied Land Forces Central Europe (LANDCENT), was kind enough to 

conduct two lengthy tutorials for me on Balkan problems. “DaZed,” as he is known, has had an 

extraordinary range of experiences in Bosnia. He was able to shed light on both the military and 

civil side of Bosnian affairs because he worked, in separate assignments, both in SFOR and the 

OHR. Mr. Dave Lange, USAREUR Political Adviser (POLAD) since General Crouch’s tenure, 

has been a good critic and guide, as has Mr. Bill Chesarek, chief of the Force Management 

Directorate (FMD) of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (ODCSOPS) in 

USAREUR. Mr. Chesarek has been a key figure in USAREUR restructuring since General 

Crouch’s time. 

Two of General Crouch’s Initiatives Group members, Lieutenant Colonels Vic Robertson 

and Andy Sandoy, provided their memories of the hectic days of summer and fall 1995, as 

did Lieutenant Colonel Peter Schifferle, formerly of V Corps, and USAREUR senior planners, 

Colonels Doug Walters, Donald G. Goff, and Paul Sims (USAREUR Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Intelligence [DCSINT]). Colonel Michael Heredia provided useful advice and insight from his 

days leading General Crouch’s initiatives group in 1996. My old friend, Colonel Greg Fontenot, 

commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, in the first Task Force (TF) Eagle, has often 

provided me with the view at ground level in 1995 and early 1996, as did Brigadier General Steve 

Hawkins, the 1st Armored Division Engineer, in 1995 and later the USAREUR Engineer. I hope 

I have provided Greg Fontenot with a satisfactory explanation of why he ended up unloading 

his trains unassisted on the Sava in December 1995. 

Major Howard Coombs and his brother officers of the 1st Royal Canadian Battle Group, 

and Colonel Robin Swan of the 1st Division’s “Blue Spaders,” provided invaluable insights into 

how the broad operational concepts of peace operations appear to the soldiers at ground level 

when the assumptions of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) all come apart. 

Both had their own adventures in the surreal, Coombs at Drvar in 1998, and Swan, earlier, at 

Gajevi. Their stories are intended to be emblematic of what the SFOR soldier experiences on a 

bad day. 

I have been helped greatly by observations of Colonels John Gingrich and John Drinkwater. 

Colonel Gingrich, as General Shinseki’s executive officer, and Colonel Drinkwater, as Chief of 

USAREUR ODCSOPS International Operations Division (IOD), did much of Shinseki’s offline strategic analysis, both for USAREUR and SFOR. Major Generals Julian Burns and John 

Sylvester, each the chief operations staff officer under Shinseki and Meigs, respectively, have 

given me extensive time and counsel, as have members of General Shinseki’s last USAREUR 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, particularly Lieutenant Colonels Mike Drumm, Rocky Gay, 

Chuck Heiden, and Rocky Ebner. Mr. Richard Dotson and Mrs. Leslie Lebel, General Meigs’ US 

POLADs at SFOR, have helped me understand the political dimension of much of COMSFOR’s 

job. Lieutenant General Michael Willcocks, Deputy Commander for Operations (DCOMOPS) 

during 1999, and earlier Chief of Staff of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (the ARRC), provided 

me with a good oversight of changes in Bosnia Operations in his time. Brigadier Roy Wilde, 

General Meigs’ CFLO, explained the Commander’s Instructions to the Parties. Mr. Oscar Vera, 

Special Adviser to CINCEUR, his executive officer Lieutenant Colonel Joel Anderson, Colonel 

Lee Hockman, Chief of Public Affairs, and Colonel Bob Tomasovic, Faction Inspector General, 

have been most helpful informing me on their particular parts of the SFOR operation, as have 

three successive SFOR legal advisers (LEGADs), Colonels Warren Hall, Mike Neveau, and Jim 

Coyne. Brigadier General James “Spider” Marks, General Meigs’ executive officer and later 
x

USAREUR DCSINT, has given me glimpses of operations I otherwise would have missed. 

I received particularly insightful counsel at the start of this project from former USAREUR 

Chief of Staff, Major General B. B. Bell, and from General John Abrams, later Commander, US 

Army Training and Doctrine Command. As Commander, V Corps and Deputy Commander in 

Chief USAREUR (Forward), General Abrams trained and deployed the first TF Eagle to Bosnia. 

Afterward, he provided day-to-day national oversight and support to the forces down range. 

General Bell served as Abrams’ deputy and chief of staff. General Abrams also pointed me 

to Colonel Maxie McFarland. Colonel McFarland was the conceptual impresario for General 

Abrams in setting up a relevant opposing force during the preparation of TF Eagle. He then led 

the Force Protection Cell for General Abrams in USAREUR (Forward), and he served General 

Meigs as his first Executive Officer as COMSFOR. Colonel McFarland attempted to pass on to 

me his keen clinical understanding of the Bosnia pathologies.

Back in USAREUR I am particularly grateful for the time spent with Major General Hondo 

Campbell, General Meigs’ chief of staff. Brigadier General “Que” Winfield and Colonel Jim 

Rabon, two more recent executive officers to General Meigs, were always patient with my 

requests for the Commander’s time. Winfield was TF Eagle brigade commander in the exciting 

days of August and September 1997, and Rabon was Meigs’ Joint Military Commission Officer 

in TF Eagle in 1996 and early 1997. As such he was a sort of multinational division (MND) 

Faction Liaison Officer at the time of first Gajevi and the first Brcko decision. Mr. Jon Whitford 

of the ODCSOPS Plans Division helped me sort out the complex issues of NATO command and 

the USAREUR Vision Process, which he manages for the Chief of Staff. If I have failed to portray 

those issues adequately, the fault is in the student. Jon is a natural teacher. Mr. Paul Quintal, Mr. 

Ron Miller, Mr. Robert Miravalle, and Mr. Joe Drach, now all of the ODCSOPS-IOD, helped me 

understand the Engagement programs begun by General Crouch, strategic planning done for 

General Shinseki (in which Mr. Quintal was John Drinkwater’s deputy), USAREUR planning in 

1995-1996 (in which Miller and Miravalle played prominent roles), and the early times in Bosnia 

when Mr. Drach was the TF Eagle POLAD. Finally, I am particularly indebted to Lieutenant 

Colonel George Hull, General Meigs’ speechwriter and research assistant. George is a patient 

and modest man of significant attainments. I could not have done much of this study without 

George’s help and counsel. 

I owe all these sources a great deal. Still, it has been my choice to depend first of all on 

contemporary documents rather than subsequent interviews and to use interviews principally 

to gain background and context, as well as correction to interpretation, which, in an operation 

as highly charged politically as SFOR’s, is frequently required. I would be remiss not to 

acknowledge the help, hospitality, and wise counsel provided by my colleagues in the history 

business, SFOR Historian Dr. James K. Orzech; USAREUR Historian Mr. Bruce Siemon; and his 

colleagues, Mr. Stephen Gehring and Mr. M. Warner Stark; and the V Corps Historian and an 

old friend, Dr. Charles Kirkpatrick. Dr. Orzech, it is worth observing, is the most innovative 

collector and archivist I have met in my years as a journeyman historian. Bruce Siemon is the 

dean of Army field historians and has forgotten more about doing institutional history than most 

service historians know. The debt I owe Bruce, too, is a large one. Finally, I owe tremendous 

obligations to my friend and mentor for this project (and a good deal else besides), Major 

General (Retired) Bill Stofft; his right hand in Heidelberg, Mr. Layne Van Arsdale, with whom 

I was honored to share an office; Colonel John Richard, USAREUR SGS and family friend; and 

Mrs. Fabienne Corcoran, the USAREUR Contract Representative. Obviously I am indebted to 

my wife who let me go.

There are some parts of this inquiry for which coverage is not adequate. The first such is the 

role of the SACEUR. It is a matter of record that both SACEURs, Joulwan and Clark, involved 

themselves intimately in the operations in Bosnia. There was a practical reason for this at the 
xi

start, in the agreement made with the Russian government on the command arrangements for 

the Russian brigade assigned to MND-North in IFOR. The SACEUR was to have a Russian 

Deputy, through whom orders would be transmitted to the Russian brigade. The brigade 

was to serve under the tactical control of the US Commander, MND-North. A second reason 

involved the high political content of even minor tactical actions in Bosnia in the early days, the 

SACEUR’s terms of reference, and the fact that the Bosnia mission was assigned to the SACEUR 

by the North Atlantic Council with some significant qualifications and to the US CINCEUR, by 

the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, with, perhaps, even more. The boundary line between SACEUR’s 

personal involvement as strategist and the actions of the SFOR Commander as his operational 

agent in theater, was not always clear. There was apparently significant friction between 

General Joulwan and Admiral Smith, the first COMIFOR.4 There certainly was between General 

Shinseki and General Clark. The relationship between these US four-star commanders needs to 

be laid out more clearly at a later date when more data is available.

Similarly, personal relationships established among senior alliance generals and the 

COMSFOR have not been addressed in full. Such are central to understanding how the 

headquarters and indeed, the command, worked. There is nothing new about coalition 

headquarters and commands, of course. A study of Eisenhower’s various command challenges 

in World War II would provide most of the lessons to be gleaned in SFOR. It might be said 

generally that, where the senior alliance staff had the confidence of the SFOR Commander, he 

was content to do much of his work through them as he would on a national staff. The difference, 

of course, is that it is easier to replace a national staff officer, even a senior one, who does not 

have the commander’s confidence, than the senior representative of a coalition partner. The 

tendency, therefore, is to suffer the inconvenience and find a way to work around the perceived 

problem unless it becomes acute. The cost of doing so, when that entails overreliance on one’s 

countrymen on the staff (or outside it), is that a perception grows up that the commander is 

serving national, not truly alliance interests. Friction follows.

These relationships between alliance commanders and staff principals are always highly 

personal. Human relationships, even in military organizations, remain just that, human, and 

subject to all the irrationality that entails. The same general observations are true with national 

contingent commanders and the multinational division commanders. It is often said that NATO 

is an alliance of the willing and some are more willing than others. This is true, if trite, and it 

affects the burden of leadership borne by the SFOR Commander. This aspect of the leadership 

problem has been dealt with in general terms in the study but by no means in its particulars. It, 

too, is worth greater study at a later date.

Finally, there is almost no mention of the operations of various national special operations or 

intelligence forces in Bosnia. This is a key omission, required by the mandate of such forces to 

operate under a cloak of secrecy. Given the importance ascribed to the arrest of persons indicted 

for war crimes (PIFWCs), not to mention the vital importance of human intelligence in peace 

operations, these are major, if unavoidable, omissions. Suffice to say such operations took up a 

good deal of the COMSFOR’s time and yielded results that could have been obtained in no other 

way. Both deserve their own study.

What results, then, is an outsider’s description of the world that confronted three Army 

generals and their staffs at USAREUR and in IFOR/SFOR. To the extent that coalition operations 

are now the norm for the US military forces, and peace enforcement a continuing mission, the 

study should have benefit to the instruction of field grade officers likely to find themselves on 

service component or alliance staffs. It should advise the institution about the requirements 

placed on leaders of coalition command in peace operations with sufficient detail to permit the 

Army to review its professional development model. Finally, this study will begin to fill what to 

date is a remarkable void in Army historical accounts of a kind of military mission often found 
xii

in fact, though neglected in doctrine. A word of warning: no attempt has been made here to 

provide an executive summary for rapid digestion of precooked lessons or insights. The value 

is intended to be in the journey, observing the developments in Bosnia and USAREUR more or 

less the way they occurred, in sequence.

Richard M. Swain

Leavenworth, Kansas 

January 2001

ENDNOTES

1. The author was Director of the Advanced Operational Art Studies Fellowship Program at the School of 

Advanced Military Studies.

2. Title 10, US Code, Sec. 3062, “Policy; composition; organized peace establishment.” See underside of front 

cover.

3. Colonel Richard Swain, “Lucky War”; Third Army Desert Storm (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command 

and General Staff College Press, 1994).

4. Carl Bildt, Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), 305.
xiii

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVIA
1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION:

AN INCIDENT IN DRVAR

It was mid-day, 24 April 1998. The armored vehicle with the rescued international aid workers 

drove through an opening made in the thin line of Canadian soldiers guarding the schoolhouse 

inside the burning residential compound. A leader in the drunken mob surrounding the school 

saw an opportunity. The Serbs sheltered inside the Canadian line, old tribal enemies, were the 

object of the venomous hatred energizing his followers, a mob of more than 400 Croat men, 

women, and schoolchildren. Some were armed with bats and knives; many had been whipped 

to a frenzy with alcohol and by the act of burning the town hall an hour or so earlier. The agitator 

started a rush. His followers were close on his heels. 

Major Howard Coombs, the company commander, stood his ground. He bowed his head so 

his helmet would deflect the paving stones hurled at him. His unit did not have Plexiglas face 

shields because it was the expressed policy of his government that they were not to be involved 

in crowd control.1 Special means of defense and nonlethal weapons had therefore not been 

issued. Coombs knew that if the mob closed to make contact with his small force of 51 soldiers, 

the line would be overwhelmed, his soldiers injured, and the people in the schoolhouse would 

be beaten and many likely killed. He knew without reflection that the responsibility for the 

escalation in the use of force to prevent the eventuality was his. He could not leave it to a soldier 

in the line behind him. 

An object inherent in conducting peace operations is to accomplish your purpose and avoid 

having people killed. Soldiers may have what are called “robust rules of engagement,” but the 

hope remains that they will not be called on to use lethal force to achieve their aims except 

in extremis, in self-defense, to protect life or certain vital property. Dead soldiers can destroy 

the strategic and political consensus that sustains national and alliance efforts, particularly in 

democratic states where popular support is not deep at the outset. Then, so far as the subject 

population is concerned, dead civilians, possibly including women and children, turn a peace 

implementation force into an army of occupation. This is especially true when the deaths are 

filmed for later broadcast and, as it happened, there were civilians filming actions in Drvar. 

Civilian deaths can delegitimize the peacekeeper’s presence and goals. They can deprive a 

small force of the local support, often grudgingly given, on which their efforts depend. Peace 

operations almost always become economy of force efforts, no matter how robustly they 

begin, and control of a hostile population requires significantly more force than one willing to 

cooperate in its own regulation.

Coombs drew his pistol and made a display of chambering a round. He gave the prescribed 

hand signals that the onrushing mob should stop. Not surprisingly, it did not. The distance 

closed, and Howard Coombs did what he had been trained to do for years as an infantryman: 

he took aim at the body mass of the onrushing agitator. Only then did the thought penetrate 

through the emotion of the moment that he had not fired a warning shot.2 A warning shot was 

mandated under his rules of engagement (ROE) prior to use of lethal force. Coombs dropped 

his arm and, without taking aim, fired a round into the ground at the feet of the lead attacker. It 

stopped the rush 15 yards from where Coombs stood. Howard Coombs had had only one option 

left--killing someone in the mob. He reflected later that, at that moment, not killing someone 

was harder than the alternative. Coombs’ warning shot was one of a number (there were five 

separate incidents of fire reported at the schoolhouse during the action) required to keep the 

mob at bay during 2 tense hours in Drvar in the early afternoon of 24 April 1998. Coombs’ shot 
2

was not the first or the last.3

This is a study of senior Army leaders in peace operations. It focuses specifically on the 

three Army generals who commanded and supported operations in Bosnia from 1995 to 2000, 

reporting particularly on the observations, insights, and implications of large peace operations—

as seen through the eyes of the senior commanders. On the operational side, it traces the course 

of NATO-led operations in Bosnia during the years when Generals William Crouch, Eric 

“Ric” Shinseki, and Montgomery C. “Monty” Meigs served as commander, US Army Europe 

(USAREUR) and as the senior NATO commander in Bosnia. As commander, USAREUR, and 

commander, Implementation Force (COMIFOR) (or, later, Stabilization Force [SFOR]), each of 

the three was responsible, separately and simultaneously, for commanding US Army forces 

in Europe, Africa, Turkey, and Israel; for providing trained and effective US Army forces to 

NATO and sustaining those provided; for conducting or supporting US unilateral operations 

in the US European Command (EUCOM) area of responsibility (AOR); and for the (NATO) 

operational command of all international forces deployed to Bosnia (save, for political reasons 

discussed hereafter, the Russians4). The period studied in this document coheres because of 

the dual responsibilities held by the officers at its center. There is a certain parallelism, too, in 

General Crouch’s 1994 arrival in Heidelberg as the first post-drawdown commander, charged 

to stabilize USAREUR from the turmoil of its rapid reduction at the end of the Cold War, and 

General Meigs’ 1999 return as what might be characterized as the first post-Bosnia commander 

required to redefine his command for the new century.

The two parallel US and NATO roles demanded a lot of balancing by the three generals. 

It was as EUCOM Army service component commander that General Crouch first became 

involved in peace operations in Europe. It was to focus on the role of Army forces in Europe 

that Meigs returned when he gave up NATO command in Bosnia almost 3 years after it was 

assumed by General Crouch. While they served as NATO commander in Bosnia, all three had 

two full-time jobs and headquarters, one in Sarajevo and one in Heidelberg. Because there are 

only 24 hours in a day, one job predominated and the other reverted largely to the hands of the 

senior Army officers remaining in Heidelberg. This could be mitigated by periodic visits to the 

headquarters in Germany, only a couple of hours by air from Sarajevo, by frequent staff visits 

from Heidelberg to Sarajevo by USAREUR staff officers, and by regular video teleconferences 

(VTCs) and constant e-mail. None of these could substitute for the presence of the USAREUR 

Commander in the Keyes Building.5 General Shinseki’s period of command of SFOR, the 

longest of the three, was marked by almost total commitment in Bosnia and infrequent returns 

to Heidelberg.

NATO participation in Dayton implementation began in December 1995. The first NATO 

force, the Implementation Force (IFOR), undertook to separate the warring Bosnian factions, 

return them to their barracks, and oversee their demobilization. The declared policy of the US 

Government then was that Bosnia operations would be limited to a year.6 The European allies 

made clear that US withdrawal would signal their own. It was apparent to most at the start, 

though never admitted publicly without some risk, that the limitation was at least naïve, if not 

disingenuous. It might mark the limit of what was politically agreeable at the moment, but it 

would not establish, or buy sufficient time to establish, any kind of lasting peace between the 

factions. Absent that, the political cost of withdrawal would be disastrous. At the end of 1996, 

NATO formally withdrew the IFOR. It replaced it simultaneously with SFOR (or transferred 

units from one to the other), a force of about 35,000, half the size of its predecessor. The US 

commitment was extended for an additional 18 months. Finally, in December 1997, the US 

President admitted the obvious. Time limits were counterproductive. The United States (and 

NATO) shifted to an open-ended commitment, subject to periodic review. As of January 2001, 

SFOR is still in Bosnia.
3

During the period of the study, the military mission in Bosnia evolved in form and content. It 

changed from a relatively short-term and straightforward military mission to separate the three 

warring factions, to a broader, longer-term civil and military security mission involving what 

has come to be called “nation-building.” Then, it became an economy-of-force mission within 

a wider NATO armed conflict with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (one of the guarantors 

of the 1995 Bosnia settlement), followed by a more or less routine sustaining mission, carried 

out by much reduced forces thereafter. At that point, the US withdrew its four-star commander 

back to the Central Region.7 There he turned to the task of reshaping the forces in Europe to meet 

more effectively the requirements of the 21st century post-Cold War world in light of both the 

collective experience in the Balkans and the Army’s wider ambitions for transformation. 

Not least important in the evolution of the Bosnia operation were the shifting of leadership 

and interest within the counsels of government in Washington; the changes in personality at the 

higher levels of US, NATO, and Bosnia policy; and the dynamic situation on the ground in Bosnia 

itself as the war receded and the various peace authorities became established, defining their 

separate spheres of authority in ways hardly envisioned at Dayton. None of the commanders 

examined here dealt with precisely the same circumstances as his predecessor or successor. 

Direct comparison, therefore, no matter how attractive, can be highly misleading. Whatever 

else they may have been, the challenges in Bosnia never remained static, nor for that matter did 

the operating interpretation of the various Dayton mandates that defined the authorities and 

responsibilities of the military commander and his civil peers.

This introduction will frame the operational mission in Bosnia by examining one of its more 

signal events and the framework of authorities that defined it. The next chapter will do the same 

for the service component task in Heidelberg. Throughout the book, one must remember that 

when the discussion focuses on one mission, the commander had to continue tracking with the 

other. He could delegate authority there but not his responsibility.

The story begins with a consideration of Howard Coombs’ small band at Drvar because 

his circumstances were the result of decisions taken by the Commander, Stabilization Force 

(COMSFOR) and the parallel civilian implementation community. Coombs’ success or failure 

would advance or retard the programs pursued by both. In examining the actions of the more 

exalted figures commanding in Bosnia, it is important to remember that their orders are carried 

out day to day in companies, most not from the United States, by officers like Howard Coombs 

and the soldiers of “Charles” Company, 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) 

Battle Group, in British led Multinational Division-Southwest (MND-SW). 

As COMSFOR, General Eric Shinseki was Howard Coombs’ senior NATO commander in 

Bosnia. COMSFOR is the operational commander of a coalition military force. He commands 

within political guidance provided not by his government alone but agreed to by leaders 

of 16 or 19 nations. (NATO expanded to 19 in 1999.) This political guidance is translated to 

military guidance by a committee of alliance generals located in Brussels (the NATO Military 

Committee), then turned into missions and instructions by the Supreme Allied Commander, 

Europe (SACEUR) in Mons, Belgium. The SACEUR is COMSFOR’s superior commander in 

NATO. 

The US national line of command also passes through the SACEUR in his national role as 

US Commander in Chief, Europe (CINCEUR). In NATO operations, command authority is 

normally divided in two with operational control (OPCON) separated from administrative 

control (ADCON). The former is normally assigned temporarily to a NATO commander, US or 

other national, while the latter is assigned by the US combatant commander to the appropriate 

service component commander, in the case of Army forces to the USAREUR Commander. The 

boundaries between operational control and administrative control are not always clear, for the 

latter often has implications for the former. This division of command is not unique to US forces 
4

but reflects the rather simple fact that alliances do not have armies, nations do, and national 

authority must, therefore, always be continuous and superior. The 1st RCR Battle Group had an 

operational chain of command that extended upward through the British commander of MNDSW, to COMSFOR, to the SACEUR. It also had a national chain of command that went through 

Canadian channels to Ottawa.

Since SFOR’s creation in 1996, an integrated alliance headquarters has supported COMSFOR. 

The staff is made up of officers from most participating nations, NATO and non-NATO. It is 

structured as much to accommodate participating nations’ desire for influence over decisions 

proportional to their individual contributions as for efficiency. COMSFOR commands divisions 

that are manned by units contributed by more than 30 different nations. While the General 

Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP), also referred to as the Dayton Accords, provides 

a common basis for action, each nation’s unit brings with it its own interpretation of the 

agreed purposes and the limits of acceptable missions. Most exercise the right to refer cases 

of disagreement to their own defense ministry. Alliance command authority is limited a priori 

to operational control and that normally within some individual national limits. Forces are 

often armed differently, trained differently, and frequently have ROE more stringent than the 

common denominator provided by the alliance. ROE, perhaps more than other features, are 

subject to national legal strictures on what is acceptable and what is not. In sum, the units are 

not interchangeable blocks. SFOR is very much an “alliance of the willing,” and some are more 

willing than are others.

Finally, the mission assigned the military in Bosnia, broadly to create an environment in 

which the GFAP can be implemented, is extremely difficult. This is not just because it involves 

putting a state together after a bloody civil war, but because there is no nation in the form of a 

common identity on which to build such a political structure. At the start, at least, there was little 

evident indigenous political will to do so. In spite of all the public disavowal of nation-building, 

nation-building is just what the international community has been involved in in Bosnia. SFOR 

has been involved increasingly in that task along with everyone else. To begin to grasp the 

complexity of the NATO task, it is helpful to understand what happened in Drvar. But, before 

proceeding, it is important to examine how SFOR came to be in Bosnia, to cover briefly its 

antecedents, and to situate the operational commander in his world.

In December 1995, the parties to the 3-year war in the former Yugoslavia signed the GFAP 

in Paris.8 The agreement had been negotiated the previous month in Dayton, Ohio, and was 

initialed there on 21 November. The Parties to the treaty agreed to a military cease-fire and also 

to a comprehensive national structure and series of actions that would confirm the existence 

of an independent state of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multiethnic federal body of two political 

Entities.9 These were a Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, comprising a union of Croatian and 

Muslim majority areas, and the Republika Srpska (RS), or Serb Republic, the Serb majority areas. 

The former occupied 51 percent, the latter 49 percent of the national territory.10 A small area 

round the strategically critical town of Brcko was left divided according to final possession with 

the ultimate disposition left to later arbitration. 

The Bosnian national government was so constituted that the representatives of any ethnic 

group could block an action perceived to be a threat to its interests. The executive consisted of a 

joint Presidency of three members, one from each ethnic group, each directly elected, two from 

the Federation (Croat and Bosniac), and one from the Serb Republic (Serb). The Presidency was 

deemed to possess in some regard civilian command authority over the armed forces. But there 

was no war or defense ministry at the national level, just a provision for a Standing Committee 

on Military Matters “to coordinate the activities of armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”11

The Entities retained their armies. Indeed, in the Federation, the Croat and Muslim factions 

retained separate armies, although in 1996 they eventually achieved some limited integration at 
5

the Entity level by dividing the key offices.12

The state itself retained the frontiers and preserved the national sovereignty of the 

internationally recognized political unit whose declared separation from the former Yugoslavia 

had led to the outbreak of the war now ended. Wartime refugees were guaranteed an 

unobstructed right of return and restoration of or compensation for lost property. There were 

provisions for guaranteeing human rights. State bodies were established to oversee their 

protection. In short, in exchange for providing the mechanisms to end the bloody communal 

war, the international community required abandonment of the claim of self-determination and 

realignment asserted by a significant plurality of the Croat and Serb populations. Furthermore, 

the international community required reestablishment of a multiethnic society with a pluralistic 

government in which all factions could feel secure. Based on agreements reached at Dayton, the 

Western and associated powers sought to impose on the Bosnians a form of civic republican 

government and a free-market economy with the promise that good behavior would bring 

integration in Europe. Subsequent elections, run under the auspices of the Organization for 

Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have provided substantial evidence that a large 

part of the general population did not accept this solution, not to mention the traditional power 

brokers in this former communist state.13 As a consequence, final success would depend on 

creating viable institutions to govern the country within a system of checks and balances while 

changing the worldview of much of the population.

Whether or not NATO military leaders believed the General Framework Agreement to be 

good policy, it was their responsibility to make it work, first narrowly, then more broadly. The 

Dayton Accords called for creation of an international military force under NATO command 

(IFOR and SFOR are properly described as NATO-led, vice NATO, organizations14) to help the 

parties to accomplish their various territorial and military undertakings. From the parties to 

the war, it called for continued compliance with the existing cease-fire, separation of the three 

faction (Croat, Bosniac [Muslim], and Serb) militaries, collection of heavy weapons and troops 

into cantonment areas and barracks, and the demobilization of forces to agreed levels.15 NATO 

operations might be premised on the agreement and cooperation of the contending parties, but 

the mission was to be one of aggressive, evenhanded enforcement, not neutrality. The Dayton 

Accords provided a clear standard for compliance. All sides agreed that responsibility for 

implementation resided with the contracting parties. The international community’s role was 

to hold the parties to their agreements--using force if necessary so far as the military provisions 

were concerned. It would take some time to acknowledge that external coercion was also 

necessary to guarantee civilian compliance.

Military operations were to be conducted under provisions of Chapter VII of the United 

Nations Charter.16 NATO commanders were authorized, indeed encouraged, to employ the 

requisite military force to impose sanctions and achieve compliance with the Dayton terms. The 

authority of COMIFOR was near absolute. Annex 1A of the General Framework Agreement 

granted the authority “without interference or permission of any Party, to do all that the 

Commander judges necessary and proper, including the use of military force, to protect IFOR 

and to carry out the responsibilities listed. . . .”17

The principal tasks assigned to the commander by the Dayton Accords were of two kinds. 

First, there were four military tasks:

1. To insure compliance by the Parties with the provisions of the annex, specifically 

withdrawal and redeployment of forces and establishment of zones of separation;

2. To authorize and supervise the selective marking of the cease-fire line and zones of 

separation;
6

3. The creation of necessary liaison arrangements with civilian and military authorities; 

and

4. To assist withdrawal of UN Peace Forces not remaining as part of IFOR.18

In addition, and of more importance later on, IFOR was charged, “within the limits of its 

assigned principal tasks and resources, to have the right” [emphasis added], 

1. To take actions necessary to help create secure conditions for the conduct by others of 

other tasks associated with the peace settlement;

2. To assist the movement of organizations in the accomplishment of humanitarian 

missions;

3. To assist the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and other 

international organizations in their humanitarian missions;

4. To observe and prevent interference with the movement of civilian populations, 

refugees, and displaced persons, and to respond appropriately to deliberate violence 

to life and person, and,

5. To monitor the clearing of minefields and obstacles.19

Taken altogether, this would come to represent a substantial grant of discretionary authority 

and competence to the military commander on the ground. It would also be the basis for 

developing an increasingly broad interpretation of the limits of the force’s charter within the 

NATO military and political structure.

The IFOR structure was created from standing NATO organizations. COMIFOR was 

US Admiral Layton Smith, the NATO regional joint force commander responsible for the 

Mediterranean, the Commander in Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) 

headquartered at Naples. Smith, who was also Commander in Chief, Naval Forces Europe 

(CINCNAVEUR), with headquarters in London, was responsible to General George Joulwan, 

the SACEUR, and through him to the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the standing committee 

of NATO member states’ foreign ministers. Notably, Smith exercised only NATO command 

over US ground forces provided to NATO. National command authority was exercised by 

General Joulwan, as CINCEUR, through the EUCOM service component commanders. For 

Task Force EAGLE, national command went from Joulwan, through General William Crouch, 

the Commander in Chief, US Army Europe (CINCUSAREUR), through a Deputy Commander 

USAREUR (Forward), Lieutenant General John Abrams, to the Commander US Task Force 

EAGLE (but not Multinational Division-North (MND-N)), Major General William “Bill” 

Nash. Obviously, there was room for misunderstanding in this arrangement if the SACEUR 

and CINCEUR had different agendas. Notably, the Russian contingent to IFOR came under 

direct operational command of the SACEUR, exercised through a Russian deputy at Supreme 

Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE). The Russian brigade in MND-N was under the 

tactical control (TACON) of the Commander, MND-N, though the Russians hedged that too, 

translating tactical control as cooperation in Russian documents.20

The IFOR staff was an international organization, as were the SFOR headquarters that 

followed it. Admiral Smith had a US Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General William “Billy” 

Carter, and CJ5 (Plans and Policies), then Brigadier General Julian “JB” Burns. Admiral Smith’s 

land component for IFOR was the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Rapid Reaction Corps, known 

as the ARRC. The ARRC was a standing and very British NATO corps headquarters commanded 
7

by Lieutenant General Sir Michael Walker. General Walker’s subordinate formations were three 

ad hoc multinational divisions. The United States, Britain, and France provided the NATO 

framework division headquarters to which were assigned, for tactical control, units from both 

NATO and non-NATO nations. Major General Nash commanded MND-N in Tuzla, and a 

French major general, Yves Le Chatelier, commanded MND-Southeast (MND-SE) in Mostar. A 

British general, Major General Michael Jackson, commanded MND-SW in Banja Luka. In 1999, 

Lieutenant General Sir Michael Jackson would command the ARRC as Kosovo Force (KFOR) 

during NATO’s occupation of that province.

Division of responsibility within Bosnia-Herzegovina was territorial. Division zones were 

drawn deliberately so the military dividing line between Entities, the zone of separation 

(ZOS), was within the divisional areas of responsibility, not traced along their boundaries. 

This prevented a temporary military boundary from hardening into a fixed political frontier. 

It also ensured that one authority watched both parties to the quarrel on their respective sides 

of the dividing line. Moving a contributed IFOR unit or element from one division zone to 

another normally required reference to that unit’s national ministry of defense.21 This limited 

the operational flexibility of the ARRC commander since it denied him the ability to concentrate 

forces from across the theater.

Contributed units might have Rules of Engagement (ROE) more (but not less) stringent than 

those set by NATO. The United States certainly had stricter rules of force protection than most. 

In short, no nation, including the United States, gave NATO commanders (even their own) 

unlimited authority over its troops.22 This also would be true of SFOR, although US national 

and NATO chains of command were greatly simplified when the US Army service component 

commander in Europe also became COMIFOR in November 1996. Creatively harmonizing 

national reservations of command, as much as differences in training, doctrine, and capability, 

posed a challenge for division and operational commanders.

The mandate for IFOR was limited to 1 year. During that period, the energies of the three 

constituent MNDs were expended principally in separating and demobilizing the faction 

military forces and maintaining a secure environment in what only recently had been the site 

of a near-total breakdown of civil order. Within 6 months, the principal military tasks had been 

accomplished largely according to schedule. IFOR could turn its attention to ensuring that 

peace held by continuously monitoring the separated military forces and punishing deviations 

from the agreement when and where they occurred.23 To the extent possible, IFOR assisted the 

reconstruction of the Bosnia-Herzegovina infrastructure in such traditional ways as rebuilding 

roads, bridges, and railroads and providing training in mine clearance. IFOR also provided 

essential planning and support for the fall 1996 national elections, required to create the new 

national political structures, the “Common Institutions,” that were expected to turn the two 

Entities into a single federal state and ultimately allow NATO forces to withdraw. 

In the MNDs that made up the IFOR, brigade and battalion commanders did what they 

could to maintain civil order and restore local economies to allow the residents to rebuild their 

lives. They did this first largely on their own, making up their doctrine as they went along, 

depending on their own imaginations and folk wisdom preserved from other peace operations. 

At the end of the mandated year, NATO could rightly take pride in the accomplishment of 

the military forces. Still, it was clear that civil implementation required much more time than 

military separation of the opposing forces. A further commitment of troops was required if 

initial gains were not to be lost in renewed conflict.24 The organization for civil implementation 

was by no means as well designed as was the military.

The first thing that strikes anyone who reads the Dayton Accords is the absolute clarity of 

the military mission and the balance between responsibilities and authorities assigned in Annex 

1A. In contrast, there is a decided lack of either clarity or definition of authority for guaranteeing 
8

agreements made in the civil spheres, a situation Mr. Carl Bildt, the first High Representative, 

blames directly on the US Government.25

While the authority of the military commander acting under the General Framework 

Agreement was extensive, clear, and unambiguous, there was no such commanding figure 

created on the civil side.26 Responsibility for monitoring implementation of the civil provisions 

of the Dayton Accords was divided. There was to be a High Representative appointed in 

accordance with a resolution of the Security Council.27 His task was “to facilitate the Parties’ own 

efforts and to mobilize and, as appropriate, coordinate the activities of the organizations and 

agencies involved in the civilian aspects of the peace settlement. . . .”28 The High Representative 

was to be “the final authority in theater regarding interpretation of this Agreement on the civilian 

implementation of the peace settlement.”29 But, except in the case of the UN International Police 

Task Force (IPTF) to whom he was authorized to “provide guidance,” the High Representative 

had no executive authority either over other civil agencies or the NATO military forces, and he 

had no direct enforcement power over the Entities. Even in the case of the IPTF, the UN inserted 

a Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) of the United Nations, superior to 

the IPTF Commissioner.30 And, most notoriously, the High Representative was explicitly 

barred from interfering in any way “in the conduct of military operations or the IFOR chain of 

command.”31 In short, no single authority was in charge of peace implementation in the Balkans 

and each authority reported back to a different hierarchy with its own agendas, only generally 

responsive to the same governments at the highest levels. According to a March 1997 General 

Accounting Office (GAO) study, the interpretation of the members of the office of the first High 

Representative was that their function was “to help resolve political issues associated with the 

agreement, rather than deal with detailed operational questions.”32

This is not entirely a fair assessment. In fact, Carl Bildt seems to have had four main objectives: 

creating a stable multiethnic Sarajevo (in which he acknowledges he failed), coordinating 

efforts to produce successful elections (in which he claims only partial success), establishing 

common institutions (in which he succeeded), and jump-starting the ruined economy with 

an adequate influx of international funding and a package of business-friendly legislation (in 

which he enjoyed some partial success). These four goals, all of them mid- and long-term and 

largely dependent on coordinated accomplishment, while Bildt faced the significant burden of 

establishing his office and organization in a ruined city from scratch, appear to have consumed 

most of his time and effort. Bildt recognized he was engaged in a long-term process, not a 1-

year event, and he seems to have set out deliberately to lay the foundation for future progress. 

Given his general lack of directive authority and absence of institutional support, it is difficult 

to gainsay Bildt’s approach.

The High Representative, like the COMIFOR, was not actually a creation of the United 

Nations, although his authority derived from approval by that body. He was nominated by 

the President of the European Union and took instructions from an ad hoc international body 

called the Steering Committee of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), which he chaired.33

Membership of the Steering Committee consisted of the Big Eight Economic Powers (the United 

States, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, and Russia) plus representatives 

of the European Union Presidency, the European Commission, and Turkey. Representatives of 

the Parties to the Dayton Accords attended the periodic council meetings to receive instructions 

and agree to revisions or elaborations to the basic agreements. PIC declarations and UN Security 

Council resolutions became authoritative current interpretations of the Dayton Accords.34

Several implementation functions were reserved specifically by the General Framework 

Agreement for organs of the United Nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Three were assigned to the 

SRSG. The Special Representative, a figure not mentioned in the GFAP, headed the UN Mission 

in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNMiBH). The SRSG was responsible for the IPTF, for UN Civil Affairs, 
9

and for the UN Mine Action Center. The IPTF mission involved monitoring, observing, and 

inspecting police activities in Bosnia. Notably, its members were unarmed and had no authority 

for arrest or detention. Of the three divisions in the UNMiBH, the IPTF was most closely 

associated with IFOR/SFOR for reasons that will be discussed hereafter. The representative in 

Bosnia of the UNHCR, a permanent UN bureaucrat with global responsibilities separate from 

the SRSG, was to provide for relief and return of refugees and displaced persons. 

The OSCE, a regional body outside the United Nations, was given oversight of elections, 

respect for human rights, sponsorship of arms reduction talks, and implementation of other 

confidence-building measures between Entities. The United States insisted on US leadership for 

the OSCE in Bosnia.35 An International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a 

creature of the Security Council created during the Balkan War, was to investigate charges of 

war crimes under international law, issue indictments, seek arrests, and prosecute accused war 

criminals.36 Responsibility for arrest, however, was vested explicitly by the Dayton Accords in 

the Parties to the Agreement. The ICTY depended on others for physical detention of persons 

indicted.37 For a long time, the NAC was reluctant to have its troops become involved in that 

aspect of law enforcement and the US military, remembering Somalia, was particularly reluctant 

to become so involved.38 Indeed, of all the troop-contributing nations, Britain alone pursued war 

criminals with any enthusiasm, and that after a change in NATO political guidance.39

The international community created no single agency or authority to provide oversight or 

direction (as opposed to coordination) for these bodies in their various endeavors. Moreover, 

for success they depended on their own mutual cooperation and on the actions of many of 

the other independent governmental and nongovernmental agencies like the World Bank, 

International Monetary Fund, US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Red 

Cross. Notably, only the military commander had authority, within his mandate from NATO, to 

impose immediate compliance with his decisions on the Entity governments. The power of the 

other agencies was limited to moral suasion or withholding of desired resources. Moreover, at 

the start, IFOR was the only organization that arrived with the means to go right to work, means 

tailored (and limited) for its requirements alone, which it was loath to parcel out to support 

other endeavors.

IFOR begat SFOR, a smaller force, operating under the same basic authorities in continuity 

with its predecessor. In its first year (1997), SFOR continued to deter renewal of hostilities by 

the faction armies. Following a change of political leadership in the United States and Great 

Britain, and coincidentally of the SACEUR, SFOR extended its activities to include control of 

paramilitary police, began to arrest persons indicted (by the ICTY) for war crimes (PIFWC), 

took over RS television broadcast links, kept the lid on a simmering civil war in the Republika 

Srpska, and underwrote two fall elections. The following year, with tensions reduced in the east, 

the international community turned to the situation in the west, particularly in the now Croatdominated border region with Croatia, of which Drvar was an important anchor. There we 

again take up the affairs of Major Howard Coombs and the 1st Royal Canadian Battle Group in 

Drvar.

Major Coombs was not new to Balkan affairs. He served in the UN Protection Force 

(UNPROFOR) in the Croatian Krajina before the Dayton Accords. He left shortly before the 

Croatian offensive of 1995 ethnically “cleansed,” or at least emptied of Serbs, that predominantly 

Serb area of the Croat motherland. On the morning of 24 April, Coombs visited his adjacent 

unit, the 9/12 Lancers, for routine coordination on a minor boundary change. On the way back 

to Drvar, he observed to his Company Sergeant Major, Master Warrant Officer (MWO) Derek 

Ingersoll, that things had certainly become quiet in Drvar lately. He would soon find that his was 

a false sense of security, for he and the 1st RCR Battle Group, to which his company belonged, 

were about to participate in one of the signal events of the spring campaign in 1998.
10

Drvar is a town in the Federation near where the narrow north-south leg of Croatia falls 

down the Adriatic coast and separates Bosnia-Herzegovina from the sea, save for one small and 

inconsequential tab on the Kanal Mali Ston.

40 It is in the area of responsibility of the British MNDSW and, in spring 1998, was more particularly in the zone of the 1st Battalion, The RCR Battle 

Group. Drvar was a Serb enclave before and during much of the recent war, until the successful 

Croatian offensive that led ultimately to the cease-fire in 1995 drove the town’s 17,000 Serbs into 

the Republika Srpska. In 1998, Drvar was occupied by about 5,000 Bosnian Croat displaced persons 

and refugees (DPREs) and 2,000 Bosnian Croat soldiers from the Federation (Croat) 1st Guards 

Brigade. Serbs were starting to return to the countryside around Drvar, threatening Croat control 

of an area that they saw as the northern anchor of their piece of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Drvar was 

a municipality where Dayton and OSCE election rules produced the anomalous situation of an 

absentee Serb mayor, Mile Marcetta, responsible for a Croat-dominated town. Marcetta lived in 

Banja Luka out of fear for his well-being and commuted to Drvar. A large number of former Serb 

residents of Drvar now lived in Banja Luka.

The leaders and auxiliaries of the local Hrvatska Demokratska Zyednica (HDZ), the Croat 

national party, and the managers of the local Finvest Company, held real power, political 

and otherwise, in Drvar. Control of he HDZ reached back to Zagreb in Croatia. Finvest was 

a company headquartered in Croatia, one of the shadowy organizations that had risen on the 

ruins of socialism. Drvar was a company town, and Finvest was the company. A brigade of the 

Croat faction Army, the Hrvatsko Vijece Odbrane (HVO) or Croatian Defense Council (in fact, 

the Croat Army in the Federation), was housed in Drvar. A web of influence and money linked 

the HDZ, the HVO, the local police, the Hrvatski veterani i invalidi domovinskog rata (HVIDRA) (a 

Croat veterans’ organization; loosely Veterans and Invalids of the Patriotic War), and Finvest. 

Filaments of influence and money extended throughout the region, through shadowy bodies 

called parallel structures,

41 into the power structure of neighboring Croatia.

Resistance to restoration of the Serb population began in 1997. Arson was the weapon of 

choice. After a series of house burnings, the situation quieted down until it revived in January 

1998. These house burnings were not random acts of resistance; they represented an organized 

effort to block returns. The Canadians in Drvar reported as much. A draft report prepared by 

the SFOR staff for General Shinseki to send to General Clark on 20 February indicated that 13 

houses had been torched.42

The international community decided to push back hard in Drvar. Indeed, General Clark 

says it was his goal to convince the international leadership to use the resistance in Drvar as 

an excuse to purge hardline officials from local government. The Deputy High Representative 

accused the Croat Deputy Mayor of responsibility for the resistance to returns. On 24 February 

the High Representative and COMSFOR wrote a letter pressuring the Federation Government 

to remove the 1st (Croat) Guards Brigade from the center of town to open up more housing 

for Serb returnees.43 By the 24th, the number of housing units destroyed had risen to 17. SFOR 

increased its surveillance. The problem festered with house burnings reported every week. By 3 

April, the number had risen to 29.44

COMSFOR undertook a determined but patient process to require Federation (Croat) 

soldiers to give up the civilian housing they occupied in Drvar.45 Though this proved to be a 

significant hardship for the Croat soldiers, many were said to be displaced persons themselves, 

slow but significant progress was made by early April. While this was going on, the Serb Mayor 

was injured in an accident on 17 March.46 He returned to his job on 9 April in time to hand over 

personally, in a public ceremony, some of the newly evacuated housing to about 183 fellow 

Serb returnees. The High Representative recognized the evacuation of civilian housing by the 

Federation soldiers in Drvar as a positive step that would lead to return of 150 Serb heads of 

households.47 Some in the Royal Canadian Regiment believed international pressure would 
11

produce a vigorous Croat reaction.48

The RCR Battle Group, commanded by Lt. Col. Peter Devlin, was ordered to secure the Serb 

returnees. Battle group presence in Drvar was increased. The battle group tactical command 

post, various battle group level troops, and Delta Company, commanded by Major Kevin Tyler, 

came to Drvar. The security of Drvar, normally the responsibility of a single company, became 

a battle group task. The Canadians warned the international community that the speed of the 

eviction of the HVO brigade and the public return of the 150 Serb families to the vacated quarters 

were producing a heightened probability of hostile reaction. The international community 

persevered. As late as the 14th, the situation appeared to be showing improvement. The battle 

group, now commanded temporarily by Major Greg MacCallum while Lt. Col. Devlin was on 

leave to Canada, began to draw down its force. Delta Company returned to its home base. Then 

the Croats pushed back. 

On the night of the 15th, there was an arson and doublemurder. The international community 

was shocked by the brutal killings of an elderly Serb couple in Drvar. Suspicious of the local 

(Croat) police, the international community impounded the bodies for autopsy in Sarajevo 

and responded by holding a press conference on the 17th, at which the High Representative, 

Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General, and the IPTF Commissioner 

spoke personally.49 The High Representative, recently empowered by the December 1997 PIC 

Conference in Bonn, dismissed the Deputy Mayor of Drvar and announced that pressure would 

be placed on the Federation Government to dismiss the chief of police and Canton Minister of the 

Interior.50 In addition, the Federation Government was given a deadline of 48 hours to appoint 15 

Serb police to serve in Drvar with the assurance, subsequently to be proven false, that the (Serb) 

Mayor could easily find more than that number of Serb police willing to serve. A suspect was 

apprehended by local police and sent to Mostar for trial. No conviction and, apparently, no trial 

followed.51 In the immediate aftermath of the killings, SFOR presence increased again. Major 

MacCallum again assumed immediate responsibility for the area, employing Delta Company 

inside Drvar, Charles Company on the perimeter, and the battle group mortar platoon inside 

the apartment complex called WH-153, now occupied by the Serb returnees. MND-SW also 

provided frequent helicopter overflight to put a lid on the arsonists. 

This immediate surge operation seemed again to curtail the violence. By the 24th, things 

were quieting down in Drvar. Major MacCallum ordered Delta Company back to its base camp 

in Zgon and displaced his tactical command post back to its permanent location, turning Drvar 

back over to Charles Company. The battle group mortar platoon, commanded by Captain Brian 

Bedard, was left in WH-153 to provide immediate security. Delta Company pulled out all but its 

rear party, the signals detachment and quartermaster sections, about 1030 on the morning of the 

24th. The riot began an hour later. 

On his way back to his base camp, about 2 kilometers from the town center, Major Coombs 

received a call from his unit, reporting that there was a small crowd of protestors assembling 

at the municipal building. The group, perhaps 50 people, was reported to be peaceable. This 

took place just as the last Delta Company element was leaving tactical radio range on the way 

back to its own base. Major Coombs dispatched two armored vehicles under the command of a 

noncommissioned officer (NCO) to observe the crowd. Each vehicle had a crew of six. Coombs’ 

company was down to a “bayonet strength” of about 60 to 70 just then. He had given special 

instructions that no vehicle would be employed with a crew of less than six, two to man the 

vehicle (a turret gunner and driver) and four capable of dismounting. His standing operating 

procedure (SOP) also required that each vehicle carry a camera to record and identify those who 

misbehaved. Coombs found that mere use of a camera often deterred miscreants. Nonetheless, 

what was important now was the inescapable fact that the two vehicles had no more than eight 

deployable infantry soldiers between them.
12

Twenty minutes later, Coombs got a second call. The NCO deployed to the town square 

reported that suddenly the crowd was building in size and force. People were coming from 

everywhere, and they were becoming angry. Coombs recognized that if the crowd rioted, it 

would not be confined to the small town square. He called his command post and invoked 

Contingency Plan MEDUSA, a plan to permit military evacuation of protected international 

workers (called Persons Designated Special Status [PDSS]) to a secure area. Coombs knew 

he lacked authority to invoke MEDUSA, but his soldiers knew the plan and could execute it 

automatically without needless explanation. On receipt of the order, his reaction force would 

fan out to bring the designated internationals into his cantonment from their residences and 

offices throughout Drvar. Coombs then moved through the town to a point where he could 

observe the town square from a good vantage point. Down there, things were going very badly, 

indeed.

While the crowd was building, a US High-Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle 

(HMMWV) operated by members of the Civil-Military Integration Cell (CIMIC) for Drvar, 

arrived.52 The two occupants were returning to their office opposite the municipal building 

just as the crowd in front of the mayor’s office reached the flash point. CIMIC teams were the 

frontline troops for SFOR’s role in civil implementation.53 Part of the command’s Combined 

Joint CIMIC Task Force, a unit of 395 military personnel from 18 nations, small CIMIC tactical 

teams were employed both with divisional units and in key regional locations in what were 

called CIMIC Houses. CIMIC Houses functioned as information clearinghouses to connect local 

residents and returnees with official and nongovernmental aid organizations. The CIMIC team 

in Drvar (two US Marine Corps [USMC] Reservists, a British NCO, and an Army Reserve major) 

was such a team. This team lived at the Canadian camp and had developed a close working 

relationship with Charles Company. The team also had worked with and become friends with 

the two elderly Serb returnees whose murder set off the chain of events described here. By and 

large, US CIMIC team members, including their brigadier general commander, were Reserve 

Component soldiers drawn from service civil affairs units. CIMIC soldiers provided the interface 

between SFOR and the common people of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They did most of the practical 

work harmonizing international efforts at the grass roots of nation-building.

The team members in the HMMWV were returning from their routine rounds in the Drvar 

area when they saw the threat that confronted their friends in the temporary structures that 

made up the international complex opposite the town hall. With little hesitation, the two soldiers 

in the vehicle drove forward slowly into the hostile crowd, moving toward their office to rescue 

their teammates. USMC Corporal Lynn E. Blanke, a female paralegal from Washington, DC, 

drove the vehicle. USMC Staff Sergeant Michael Hall, from Charlotte, North Carolina, rode with 

her. They joined the remainder of their team in the office: their team leader, Major Julio Dunich; 

British Lance Corporal John Neuman; and Jelena Curic, a native interpreter. Major Dunich, an 

Army Reservist was, ironically, a Croatian American from New Jersey. He and Neuman had a 

second, but unarmored, HMMWV at their building.

Major Dunich had alerted Coombs’ command post of what was going on at the municipal 

building. The team then helped other international workers, particularly unarmed members 

of the IPTF and the Drvar representative of the UNHCR, escape their buildings, which were 

starting to burn as the crowd turned their violence on the internationals. The team put the 

civilians into the two, soon overloaded, HMMWVs and drove back through the crowd in face of 

what one team member called melon-sized rocks thrown by a crowd in a frenzy of hatred. Other 

international workers fled on foot toward the Canadian camp. Every nonmilitary international 

commercial vehicle was set on fire and/or overturned by the mob. A stone knocked out the 

window of the armored HMMWV driven by Corporal Blanke, but the vehicles got through the 

mob without the need to discharge their firearms. The Canadians, whose vehicles the mob had 
13

also attacked, collected what internationals they could, then escorted the two US vehicles and a 

column of walking, limping, and bleeding internationals back to the Canadian compound where 

they all lived. Coombs, who saw all this from his vantage point, said the column reminded him 

of Napoleon’s march from Moscow.

Coombs moved off through the crowd (estimated to be around 70 persons) after his column. 

He stopped only to separate the mob from some Serb firemen who were attacked by the crowd 

when they arrived to fight the fires in their UN-donated fire truck and to pull what appeared 

to be the remains of the Serb mayor into the command vehicle. A member of the town’s civilian 

police flagged the vehicle down and pointed to where the mayor was lying as Coombs and his 

sergeant major moved toward the camp. The Finvest Company, which was contracted to provide 

fire protection to the town, declined to fight the fires, and the police, who had been watching 

the crowd build up, maintained a studied neutrality. The pick-up of the mayor had to be rapid 

because some members of the mob were following Coombs’ vehicle on foot. Only on the way to 

the camp did the vehicle crew discover the mayor was still alive, though severely beaten.

The riot at Drvar was not spontaneous. It was organized and directed, at least at the start. 

Focus on the international complex kept the mob from pursuing the departing Canadians 

very far. Meanwhile, Major Coombs was confronted with a serious problem. The opposition 

(or whoever had organized the riot, and suspicion naturally attached to the HDZ and the 

former deputy mayor who was seen watching the riot start) had won the first round. They had 

concentrated more people in time and space than the interested security forces, and they had 

driven the internationals from the heart of the town and beaten the Serb mayor nearly to death. 

Coombs had to regain or at least strive for the initiative until he could be reinforced, for the mob 

outnumbered substantially any force he could deploy against it.

Coombs responded. He called his command post and ordered that every available vehicle be 

manned to follow him when he returned. His concern was for the hundred or so Serb returnees 

at WH-153, formerly the area housing the 1st (Croat) Guards Brigade, now guarded by mortar 

platoon. He was desirous, too, that action to account for all the internationals continue, and that 

some provision be made for a measure of security for Serbs living in the outlying area. He also 

had to defend his base camp. That was a lot to do with only 60 to 70 usable troops and with 

a mob numbering in the hundreds running loose. Coombs’ decisionmaking was aided by the 

presence of two British helicopters at his base camp. One, piloted by a British warrant officer, 

immediately went airborne and provided an invaluable air observation post, reporting on 

crowd movement throughout the afternoon. This real-time information allowed the company 

commander to deploy his outnumbered forces efficiently with a confidence he would not 

otherwise have enjoyed. 

When Coombs got to his camp, he unloaded the mayor at his first-aid station and ran to his 

command post. There, he told his second in command to tell everyone on his command net 

what he knew about what was happening. He decided to maximize the force at the weapons 

holding site (to reinforce the mortar platoon). He also sent a reduced platoon of about 20 men 

in trucks, with some armored vehicles as escort, to move through the countryside evacuating 

Serb returnees for their protection and hopefully keeping mobile Croat thugs off balance. He 

ensured MEDUSA was working and would continue to pull in scheduled internationals. Not 

surprisingly, many of the location rosters maintained with SFOR for international personnel 

were out of date. Coombs pressed a visiting Canadian officer into organizing an ad hoc camp 

defense using various visiting troops, then he ordered his mobile troops to mount and follow 

him. He set off for the apartment complex where the mortar platoon, manned by retrained 

artillerymen, had collected the Serb returnees into the compound’s schoolhouse for protection. 

By the time the reinforcements arrived, the housing complex itself looked like the town center, 

with buildings on fire and every international vehicle burning or overturned. The crowd was 
14

throwing rocks and diesel fuel at the building. The mortar platoon had reported receiving 

mortar fire. Later, however, it was determined they had heard vehicle gas tanks exploding. 

What Coombs found when he arrived with his nine vehicles was a small line of soldiers 

standing with fixed bayonets inside the housing compound but outside the schoolhouse. 

Warning shots had been fired from a vehicle-mounted machinegun. Coombs remembers wryly 

that the only instruction he had received from his higher headquarters was that no crew-served 

weapons were to be fired without prior authorization. Coombs’ troops in hand numbered 

no more than 51. Three of the infantry soldiers, as it happened, were females, brought on 

active duty for active operations from the regiment’s militia battalion. The soldiers of Charles 

Company were protecting a group of approximately 100 Serbs and miscellaneous internationals 

who had found security at the site or were brought in during the confrontation. Mortar platoon 

had a British Army dog team of two handlers with their dogs. One handler, who had been in the 

army only 2 months, succumbed to battle stress. This reduced the complement to one, as the dog 

belonging to the incapacitated handler immediately protected his master and would let no one 

come near him, either for harm or help.

The problem of riot control in such a situation is maintaining standoff, separation between 

the crowd and the defenders. This is particularly critical where the former outnumbers the 

latter significantly, for once contact is made, where defenders have only bodies and rifles for 

their defense, a melee promises defeat or rapid escalation to deadly force. The Canadians had 

no crowd control devices, such as mobile barbed-wire obstacles, to help establish the necessary 

separation. (There was wire around the complex perimeter, but the mortar platoon had been 

too small to defend along the perimeter and thus withdrew to the schoolhouse.) The troops had 

no nonlethal means of defense, no pepper spray, no special protective equipment. Coombs’ 

Company Sergeant Major, MWO Ingersoll, instructed the mortar platoon to remove their 

bayonets. Their use was not provided for in the ROE. Coombs walked down his thin line talking 

to his soldiers and reminding them of their rules. 

Coombs’ concern over the standoff was based upon his fixed determination not to put the 

soldiers in the position where they would have to make a decision to use deadly force to protect 

themselves. Warning shots had proven effective so far in halting the crowd. They would have 

to be repeated again throughout the afternoon, each time in response to a particularly acute 

threat. By now, the crowd was drunk and out of control of any guiding hand, though individual 

agitators could be identified. All this took place—the burning of the city center, the return to 

camp, the redeployment of force and the defense of the Serbs—roughly between 1200 and 1400 

hours. The company commander would operate on his own until either he succeeded with what 

he had or reinforcements arrived. Coombs says that he did not worry about whether help would 

come. That reinforcements were being prepared was something he could take for granted, 

unlike, he says, the situation he had faced in UNPROFOR 4 years earlier when a group of rioters 

actually got into the school and were chased out. Word was passed to the crowd through some 

civilian police that anyone who repeated the act would be shot. They did not return.

Reinforcements were in fact on the way. First to arrive was Major General Cedric Delves, 

British Commander of MND-SW. Delves came directly from his assumption of command 

ceremony held that day in Banja Luka. General Delves arrived at the scene, took a report, and 

ordered Coombs to split his force to chase the mob, which was beginning to fragment, away 

from the center of town. Major Coombs declined, reminding the commanding general, gently, 

that he (Coombs) was the officer in tactical command. Under the command arrangement in 

place under NATO rules, Coombs was entirely within his rights to do so. Responsibility to fight 

his unit was his. He could not be ordered to subdivide it. 

General Delves withdrew to the command post in the camp where he could affect the action 

by bringing in additional forces. Major MacCallum, who had left only hours earlier that morning, 
15

hitched a ride back to Drvar on a Czech helicopter. He recalled Delta Company and his tactical 

command post. He flew first to the housing site at WH-153, where he arrived, he says, about 

1430. After getting a report of the situation and giving his instructions to Major Coombs, he 

then joined General Delves at the Canadian camp outside of town on the other side. MacCallum 

instructed Charles Company and the mortar platoon to continue to secure the housing area. 

When Delta Company returned, he instructed Major Tyler to reenter the town and begin to 

reassert control over the streets by establishing foot patrols and check points. He sent his mobile 

reconnaissance troops out to patrol the surrounding area. At MacCallum’s request, General 

Delves augmented the Canadian Battle Group with a Warrior (armored vehicle) company of 

the (British) Royal Green Jackets. They arrived the following morning. The British troops were 

equipped for riot control, though by the time they arrived their use in that role was to serve as a 

deterrent against resumption. After 2 to 3 hours, the major threat was past. The riot was spent, 

and the crowd broke into small groups roaming the town and doing whatever mischief they 

could. What remained to be done was stamping out the embers of the violence. The battle group 

maintained its expanded presence in Drvar for the next month.

Tactically speaking, the inescapable conclusion is that the Croats accomplished their aims, all 

perhaps except for killing someone themselves or prompting the Canadians to shoot someone 

in the crowd who could then become a martyr. They achieved tactical surprise. They assembled 

superior force in time and space more quickly than the security forces (police or military) had 

been able to respond. They burned the city hall, beat the troublesome Serb mayor nearly to 

death, and drove the international community out of Drvar with their tails between their legs. 

They burned the housing complex taken from the 1st(Croat) Guards Brigade and convinced the 

100 or so Serb families that they did not want to return to Drvar quite then. All in all, it was not 

a bad day for the Croats.

Once he realized he was in a fight, Major Coombs responded with skill and courage, as had 

the rest of the 1st Royal Canadian Battle Group. Coombs shifted his forces in response to the 

developing geometry of the problem. He correctly identified the critical point and succeeded 

in pulling in all assigned internationals and protecting the Serbs in the schoolhouse. His troops 

suffered injuries, but he avoided disaster or the use of deadly force, although he went to the 

brink several times. He kept his small force at the school from being engaged at close quarters. 

He kept a minimal area of separation by the skillful use of credible demonstrated potential 

to escalate to deadly force. He had been handicapped in his defense by the absence of special 

equipment both for individual defense and for applying nonlethal force to regain control of the 

situation. Major MacCallum agrees with Coombs that the force was handicapped by the absence 

of nonlethal weapons and protective gear. He observes that this weakness was remedied within 

days, both by issue of protective masks, shields, and wooden batons along with training in their 

use. Coombs believes he was helped by experience in his predeployment validation training in 

which he had been required to respond to a violent civil disturbance in circumstances where his 

force was limited. Canadians emphatically do not do riot control, but they were wise enough to 

anticipate the need to perform security duties in the face of a hired mob. Howard Coombs had 

made all these decisions before.

Within 36 hours, General Shinseki visited the battle group in Drvar for an after-action review 

(AAR). In fact, Coombs recalls that every general officer in the theater, as well as every senior 

international agency head, seemed to descend on the battle group. He found Shinseki courteous, 

personable, articulate, and bright: a real leader. Lt. Col. Devlin and Major MacCallum second 

this view. Twelve hours later, MacCallum and Coombs had the privilege of conducting another 

AAR for the international leadership, this one directed by General Clark, the SACEUR.54 Soon 

after, the Canadians were visited by their Chief of Defense Staff, General Maurice Baril. 

Major MacCallum distinguishes between the two AARs. Shinseki’s interest was essentially 
16

tactical, he says. Clark’s was strategic and directed as much at the senior representatives of the 

international community attending, among them the High Representative, Mr. Westendorp. 

Before that group, Major Coombs again described his actions during the riots. Reactions to his 

briefing by the international audience differed. Some complained that force was not used early 

enough. Coombs’ response was that he was not going to kill anyone to save a UN computer 

from destruction by the mob. 

Major MacCallum feels the UNHCR blamed SFOR for failing to maintain a secure 

environment. MacCallum attributes the misunderstanding between SFOR and the various 

nonmilitary internationals to a different appreciation of the extent of SFOR’s responsibilities. 

He points out that local (Croat) authorities had primary responsibility for security. Lt. Col. 

Devlin says his battle group was employed properly as “the force of last resort.” Both Devlin 

and MacCallum argue that the international community created the difficulty by moving too 

fast, with too little preparation of the Croat residents, to whom it must have appeared that 

“their” town was being turned over to their traditional enemies by the international community. 

Although Clark himself was among those wishing to apply even greater pressure for strategic 

reasons, he rose finally and clearly indicated that he found the actions of the Canadians to have 

been all that might have been expected. According to Major MacCallum, General Clark asked 

in a challenging way whether there was anyone present who thought otherwise. The silence, 

MacCallum remembers, was deafening. 

In retrospect, Coombs admits he missed the signs that something big was up on the 24th, 

but he takes pride in the fact that his troops stood, that no one was killed, and that all protected 

persons were ultimately accounted for and made secure. He credits the timely and accurate 

reporting of his subordinates with enabling him to visualize the situation accurately and thus 

swing his forces in a timely manner to respond to the shifting threat. He also emphasizes the 

importance and comfort of the sure knowledge that help would arrive. Lt. Col. Devlin strongly 

endorses the ROE extant at the time, as does Major Coombs. Both believe the troops were 

confident they knew what was expected of them.

Drvar was a strategic success for the Croats too. It permitted them to delay further returns for 

up to a year, and it drew the SACEUR’s personal attention to the local power structure. Major 

Coombs says General Clark came two or three times to deal with the civil officials who naturally 

became unimpressed with the local military commander now that they had the attention of 

his atmospheric leader. For his part, General Clark reflects that his purpose was to educate the 

international community, and that the incident should have been used as an excuse to remove 

intransigent Croat officials wholesale, something for which the international leadership did 

not have the stomach. In retrospect, Clark ties the reelection of hardliners in both Entities the 

following fall to the failure of the international community to strike hard and decisively after 

Drvar.55

The High Representative did appoint a special resident official to coordinate events in Drvar, 

though he was unable for some time to find qualified Serbs to integrate the Drvar police. The 

political problem of Drvar dragged on for a year before decisive action was finally taken to put 

the local government into receivership.56 How the SFOR command responded will be addressed 

in the chapter treating events of 1998. The present chapter has been intended to set the context 

for a study of senior leadership in peace operations in Bosnia by describing the Dayton peace 

implementation structure and pointing out by example that underneath the Dayton structure 

there were soldiers and civilians, on the ground, performing their duties day to day, at no small 

risk and often in great discomfort. 

The riot at Drvar was a traumatic event for the peacekeepers because it fell right on the 

boundary created by the misleadingly clean division deliberately laid down at Dayton between 

civil and military authorities. The Canadian SFOR troops were willing to accept risk and losses 
17

to protect persons but not property, a distinction the leadership of the civilian implementation 

community did not grasp or approve. The SACEUR, like the Special Representative of the 

Secretary General about whom Dayton is silent, wanted an energetic response from the 

international community after the riot and found that beyond the capability of the High 

Representative or his organization. Even moving a resident commissioner into Drvar proved 

difficult in light of the terms of service under which OHR employees worked.57 Integrating 

Serbs into the Drvar police force rapidly proved far beyond the grasp of the international 

community. 

For everything except stopping the war, the General Framework Agreement for Peace was 

a seriously flawed document. It reflected the general disarray of the international community 

once its members got beyond a general desire to stop the killing and retain the polity of BosniaHerzegovina within its recognized boundaries. Unable to agree on purposes, they were unable 

to agree on empowering a single civil implementation authority (the High Representative). 

The international community waffled, comforting themselves in the notion that the residents 

of Bosnia-Herzegovina really wanted to be good European citizens of a pluralistic civic state, 

which they would do with only the barest of guidance, plus, of course, significant financial 

support to kick start the process. The highest peace implementation authority, the PIC, was an 

ad hoc group of statesmen representing, by year 2000, 55 governments and agencies,58 lacking 

any collective structural counterpart, who met periodically as a sort of board of directors for 

the High Representative. The PIC could agree but action had to come from the individual 

governments the members represented. 

The senior resident civil implementation official in Bosnia was the High Representative, in 

January 1996 a diplomat without offices, money, employees, or authority, except what he could 

generate personally. Offices, funding, and employees gradually would be pulled together. 

Authority would begin to accrue, but lacking definition in executive terms until the Bonn PIC 

Conference in December 1997. Fundamental to the Dayton Accords and to understanding much 

of the challenge facing leaders in Bosnia was the fact that the military authorities of the ad hoc 

international condominium running what gradually became the Bosnian protectorate were 

explicitly not subordinated to the civil authorities. This was a situation that ran counter to the 

conceptual set western political leaders carried with them as part of their general intellectual 

baggage. COMIFOR/SFOR worked for the North Atlantic Council, through the SACEUR, and 

the final IFOR and SFOR mandate (the document describing what the commander was to do-- 

as opposed to what he might do), so often discussed but wrongly attributed, was written not at 

Dayton but at Brussels by that body. This general lack of overarching structure contributed to 

a situation in which individual personality could play a disproportionate role in shaping the 

international response at any particular moment. Civil officials, unable to direct military action 

and unwilling to be caught bluffing, were often inhibited or, alternatively, viewed as reckless by 

military officers responsible in the final analysis for their security when they did act. At the same 

time, senior military officers were sometimes perceived to be dabbling in Bosnian civil politics 

to a degree not normally acceptable in the western civil-military tradition where military men 

are expected to stick to their professional knitting. The situation was bound to lead to friction in 

the parallel authorities.

A number of tactical insights may be drawn from the riot in Drvar that contribute to 

understanding of the military challenges down on the ground. First is the skill with which the 

international community’s Croat opponents could mass a hostile crowd in time and space and 

direct it against specific targets. Coombs noticed that many of the members of the crowd were 

young men with short hair and in good physical trim, indicating, he believes, Croat military 

participation. Evidence of military involvement developed by SFOR afterward was inconclusive. 

Coombs also observed that Croat businesses were spared, while Serb and international 
18

enterprises burned as if ignited by prepared incendiaries. Major MacCallum’s view is that the 

Croats focused their attacks on the returning Serbs and the international agencies viewed as 

their immediate problems, the UNHCR and the IPTF. They did not seem to have any particular 

desire, he says, to take on SFOR as such. Both MacCallum and Coombs link the timing of the riot 

to the morning withdrawal of Delta Company. However, the early dismissal of Croat schools 

on March 24th may have been more coincidence than skillful groundlaying. The same can be 

said with regard to the murders on the night of March 25-26. But it seems quite possible that the 

disturbance at city hall and the IPTF area was planned notwithstanding the presence of Delta 

Company, perhaps as a more limited affair that simply got out of hand when not contained.

Second, the Croats’ rent-a-crowd tactic was a particularly effective asymmetric response 

against SFOR’s deployment for area security and then against the logical and necessary 

inhibition of SFOR to employ deadly force. A company was the normal garrison for Drvar. On 

the 24th, there was only one company, reinforced by the mortar platoon, once Delta Company 

had withdrawn. That was adequate force to maintain control within the normal level of unrest 

and with the assumption that the local police would do their duty. Reinforcement in response 

to a larger threat or total failure of the local constabulary required time. Since policy demanded 

that the original responsibility for local security would rest with the local civil police, their 

failure to do their duty almost always meant military forces would react to events, not define 

them. A more responsive and robust policy would have required more troops. Put another way, 

there was no alternative to the thin presence on the ground with a force as small as SFOR being 

responsible for an area the size of Bosnia. 

Only good human intelligence could permit sufficient anticipatory response to preempt 

trouble, and it appears that good intelligence was lacking in Drvar, notwithstanding the 

general awareness that a series of draconian actions by the international community had 

created an environment in which trouble could arise. The Canadian Battle Group could not stay 

concentrated at Drvar for a prolonged period because that left the rest of its sector uncovered. It 

is also important to remember that, for the Croats, the benefit of surprise was fleeting. Substantial 

reinforcements would arrive within a matter of 2 to 3 hours. Serious damage could be done, but 

it would have to be quick. 

Third, with regard to the peacekeepers’ disinclination to use lethal force, the lesson is clear: 

a drunk with a rock or bat is an unarmed victim after he is shot. It is a point of fine judgment 

on the part of the commander on site to determine the point in time beyond which not killing 

someone would put his own force, or those under his protection, at an unacceptable risk. A 

related lesson, ultimately learned at Drvar, was that withholding nonlethal means of defense 

actually hastened the point where deadly force might have to be used. Thereafter, Coombs says, 

the battle group prefabricated portable barbed-wire obstacles and stockpiled concertina wire. 

The Canadian government began training replacement forces in use of nonlethal means for 

defense in crowd situations and issued the necessary equipment for individual self-defense.59

Fourth, the incident with General Delves points to one difference between alliance 

operations and single-nation command, and it is to the credit of both Coombs and Delves that 

they understood the difference and respected it. A fifth important lesson is that the world looks 

different at the tactical level as compared with the strategic. MacCallum feels the international 

community pushed too hard at Drvar, and the riot was the predictable outcome. Clark believes 

pushing was the proper strategy, and that the riot had provided a strategic opportunity that was 

wasted by the unwillingness of the internationals to act with resolution. 

Finally, the incident at Drvar says a good bit about the character of General Shinseki in the 

impression he left with the company commander who became, for a while, the central focus of 

second guessing by the international leadership in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Shinseki came to see 

for himself what had happened. He listened, he coached, he mentored, and he left the officer in 
19

tactical command with an obvious sense that he was commanded by a leader who understood, 

cared for, and supported to the limit the troops under his command, even when they came from 

another nation. Sincerity, humanity, and evident professional skill all are useful qualities for 

senior leaders in SFOR or anywhere else.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 1

1. A summary of Canadian policy was prepared for General Shinseki after the event by the Canadian Contingent 

Staff in Bosnia. The policy both precluded employment of Canadian Force units in riot control operations and 

explicitly indicated that “specialized equipment (baton rounds, plastic ammo, batons, and shields) are not 

authorized.” Helmet visors, as it happened, were authorized for self-defense under this policy. HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Visitors, General Maurice Baril, Chief of Defence, Canada, Prep Book, 9 

May 1998, TAB 4. A number of Canadian officers have linked the policy to an incident in Canada in 1990, in which 

the government used army troops to suppress a domestic civil disturbance. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Devlin, the 

Commander of the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group at Drvar believes the prohibition antedated the 

event. There is no debate on the existence of the policy.

2. The narrative of Canadian actions is drawn from phone conversations with Lieutenant Colonel Peter Devlin, 

Major Greg MacCallum, and Major Howard Coombs; documents provided the author by Major Coombs from postoperation analysis, as well as documents and e-mail provided by Major Kevin Tyler. Lt. Col. Devlin commanded 

the 1st RCR Battle Group. Maj. MacCallum was his second in command and exercised command on the 24th of 

April in the absence of Lt. Col. Devlin who was on leave in Canada. Maj. Coombs commanded ‘Charles’ Company. 

Maj. Tyler commanded ‘Delta’ Company of the Battle Group. In this case, Maj. Coombs wrote a Memorandum, 

dated 2 May 98, [SUBJECT] ACCT OF WNG SHOT—24 APR. Copy provided to author. This account has been 

reviewed by the officers indicated above.

3. The Canadians had to account for all their warning shots. Five separate and distinct incidents were reported: 

two involved rifle shots; one a vehicular mounted machine-gun burst; and two involved shots from 9mm pistols.

4. As will be discussed hereafter, the Russians participate in Bosnia operations under a somewhat ambiguous 

agreement where they fall under command of the SACEUR, exercised through a Russian deputy assigned to 

SHAPE, to the Russian Brigade. The Russian brigadier also falls under NATO Tactical Control (which the Russians 

call “interoperability”) of the commander, Multinational Division-North, who falls under NATO Operational 

Control of the SFOR Commander. See Richard L. Layton, “Command and Control Structure,” and Kenneth Allard, 

“Information Operations in Bosnia: A Soldier’s Perspective,” in Larry Wentz, et al., Lessons From Bosnia: The IFOR 

Experience (Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies and Department of Defense Command Control 

Research Program, 1997), 43-44, and 261-264.

5. The Keyes Building houses the command group of USAREUR Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany.

6. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, “The Iron Logic of our Bosnian InVolvement,” Defense 96 (Alexandria, 

VA: American Forces Information Service, January 1996), 15.

7. NATO Europe north of the Alps.

8. The General Framework Agreement, or Dayton Accords, can be found at http://www.ohr.int/gfa/gfa-home.htm.

9. Where the word refers to the two Entities of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a capital E is used. Generally 

the term faction is employed when addressing any or all of the three recognized cultural groups: Bosniac (Muslim), 

Serb, or Croat. The term Croatian is limited to matters or things somehow related to the Republic of Croatia. Croat 

is used as a general ethnic descriptor.

10. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), 294-296.
20

11. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 4, Constitution, Article V, “Presidency,” para. 5(b).

12. The national constitution was drafted at Dayton. It is Annex 4 to The General Framework Agreement. On the 

drafting of the Constitution, see Carl Bildt, Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia (London: Weidenfeld & 

Nicolson, 1998), 136-37, 139, 149, 272. Bildt provides a balancing view in contrast with Holbrooke’s more narrow 

account.

13. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, June 

1998, Bosnia Peace Operation—Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International InVolvement Increased, GAO/

NSIAD-98-138, Appendix IV, “USIA Polling Data on Opinions That Bosnia’s Ethnic Groups Hold of Each Other.” 

Holbrooke, To End a War, is quite clear the RS politicians were coerced. As late as the 2000 elections the old war 

parties, the Bosniac SDA, Serb SDS, and Croat HDZ, still commanded pluralities, especially in the Croat and Serb 

areas. 

14. NATO-led because non-NATO members participated under NATO leadership.

15. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Agreement on Military Aspects of the Peace Settlement.

16. United Nations, Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1031, 15 December 1995. Available at http://

www.ohr.int/docu/ u951215a.htm. 

17. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Article VI, “Deployment of the Implementation Force,” para. 5. 

Holbrooke credits General Wesley Clark with inserting this “Silver Bullet” clause. Holbrooke, To End a War, 223.

18. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Article VI, Para 2.

19. Ibid., para 3. 

20. Allard, “Information Operations in Bosnia: A Soldier’s Perspective,” in Wentz, et al., Lessons From Bosnia: 

The IFOR Experience, 261-264.

21. Correspondence on the subject can be found in letters addressing creation of an SFOR operational reserve 

force, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Journal, Vols. 1-a (20 October 

1996 to 1 February 1997), and b (3 February 1997 to 29 March 1997). [Also styled Stabilization Force Commander’s 

Journal].

22. This was the point of Fragmentary Order (FRAGO) 5 to USAREUR Execute Order for USAREUR Forces in 

Support of Operation Joint Endeavor, issued on 17 January 1996. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, 

Operation Joint Endeavor; USAREUR Headquarters After Action Report, Vol. 1 (May 1997), 55-56.

23. “Major IFOR Milestones,” in North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO Basic Fact Sheet No. 4, NATO’s 

Role in Bringing Peace to the Former Yugoslavia (March 1997), 9. See also summary of activities in comments by 

General George Joulwan in, NATO Headquarters, Press Conference by the Secretary General and SACEUR, Brussels, 

17 December 1996. Available at http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1996/ s961217e.htm.

24. It is naïve to say, as some do, that the civil implementation effort did not keep pace with military efforts. 

One might as well say a marathon runner did not keep pace with a sprinter. Building a civil society and legal 

system where none exists is not a job done in haste. It is wise to remember that international organizations do 

not contain their life support systems integrated within themselves as do armies. In the case of the Office of the 

High Representative, there was no such thing in December 1995. It had to be built from scratch as implementation 

was ongoing. For some appreciation of the difficulty the civilian sector faced, see Carl Bildt, Peace Journey, ch. 10, 

“Fragile Beginnings: November 1995-March 1996,” 162-199.

25. Bildt, Peace Journey, 130-131.

26. For an explanation of this feature of the General Framework Agreement as well as a good general critique 
21

of the settlement, see Pauline Neville-Jones, “Dayton, IFOR and Alliance Relations in Bosnia,” Survival, Vol. 38, no. 

4 (Winter 1996-97), 45-65. Neville-Jones was the United Kingdom representative at Dayton and later Bildt’s deputy 

in Brussels.

27. UNSCR 1031. This is the same resolution that endorsed IFOR. Neville-Jones, “Dayton, IFOR and Alliance 

Relations in Bosnia,” 50, asserts the US wanted all the key leadership positions and indicates this dispute led to 

the emasculation of the High Representative’s powers when the Europeans held firm on appointing a European as 

High Representative.

28. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 10, Agreement on Civilian Implementation, Article I, “High 

Representative,” para. 2.

29. Ibid. Article V, “Final Authority on Implementation.”

30. United Nations, Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1035, 21 December 1995, provided for “a United 

Nations civilian police force to be known as the International Police Task Force (IPTF),” a “United Nations civilian 

office” and “a United Nations Coordinator.” The latter became SRSG.

31. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 10, Article II, “Mandate and Methods of Coordination and 

Liaison,” para. 9.

32. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, May 1997, 

Bosnia Peace Operation—Progress Toward Achieving the Dayton Agreement’s Goals, GAO/NSIAD-97-132, Chapter 1:

3.2.1.

33. Bildt, Peace Journey, 165-166.

34. When the author asked Colonel James Coyne, SFOR LEGAD (1999), to identify the legal “mandate” of 

COMSFOR, he identified the General Framework Agreement, the series of PIC Declarations, and the current United 

Nations Resolution enabling SFOR. As a practical matter, these are further narrowed by guidance from the North 

Atlantic Council that serves as the practical, if not legal, mandate for COMSFOR.

35. Holbrooke, To End a War, 321.

36. United Nations, Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 827, 25 May 1993.

37. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 4, Article II, “Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,” para. 

8, Cooperation.

38. Bildt attributes the formula adopted by NATO, “that IFOR troops could apprehend persons indicted for 

war crimes only if they very clearly encountered them in the course of their regular duties and, in addition, if the 

tactical situation permitted,” to General Joulwan. Bildt, Peace Journey, 170 and 215.

39. Whatever the NATO policy, down in the MNDs apparently there was some unsuccessful free-lancing. 

Colonel Greg Fontenot, commander of 1st Brigade of TF Eagle, told the author he and General Nash conducted one 

high speed pursuit of a Serb suspected war criminal in Brcko.

40. With a small port at Neum. In November, Croatia and the Federation signed an agreement permitting 

the Federation to use the Croatian port of Ploce, which had passed 70% of its prewar commerce to and from 

BH. See comments by Chris Riley, OHR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 24 November 1998, 1140 

hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. Transcripts for all SFOR Press Conferences are 

available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/trans.htm.

41. Parallel structures is a term used in Bosnia to describe shadowy organizations, often left over from the 

war, that continue to function as quasi-governmental authorities outside the structure established under Dayton. 

Among the most troublesome are faction intelligence organizations.
22

42. DRAFT Memo To: SACEUR, From: COMSFOR, [Subject] ASSESSREP 20 February 1998, in HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, February 1998. Commander’s 

Initiatives Group prepared these periodic reports for COMSFOR to send to the SACEUR. Records of Initiatives 

Group do not reflect content of final copies dispatched.

43. Letter, Office of the High Representative, dated 24 February 1998, to H.E. Alija Izetbegovic, H.E. Kresimir 

Zubak, H.E. Ejup Ganic, and H.E. Vladimir Soljic in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, February 1998.

44. Count given on loose slide in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, 

DRVAR.

45. See for example, Memorandum, dated 24 March 1998, [Subject] Highlights for the Record of the Meeting with 

the Federation Minister of Defense and the Federation Generals on the Issue of Vares and Drvar on 24 March 1998, 

written by Major Brian Douglas, Canadian Army, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, March 1998, or the letter from COMMANDER SFOR to Minister Jelavic, 

Minister of Defense Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, dated 21 April 1998 in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, April 1998.

46. HQ USAREUR, Memorandum TO: COMSFOR, From: SFOR-CIG, [SUBJECT:] Morning VTC Notes for 04/

14/98, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, April 

1998

47. Office of the High Representative, Press Release, Press Release on Drvar, 9 April 1998. Available at http://

www.ohr.int/press/p980409a.htm. MAJ MacCallum gives the number 183. Difference may have to do with a difference 

in categories, individuals, and heads of households.

48. Major Greg MacCallum to the author. Major MacCallum is critical of the high profile ceremony chaired 

by Ambassador (US) Jacques Paul Klein, then the Principal Deputy High Representative, to turn over the Croat 

Army housing to the Serb Returnees. MacCallum says the antagonistic body language of the Croat officials was 

unmistakable.

49. Office of the High Representative, Briefing, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 17 April 1998, 1130 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. (Provided by NATO/LANDCENT). Available at http:

//www.ohr.int/press/p980417a.htm.

50. The Bonn PIC empowered the High Representative to do three key things: “to make binding decisions, as he 

judges necessary, on . . . timing location, and chairmanship of meetings of the common institutions...; [on] interim 

measures to take effect when parties are unable to reach agreement [in effect impose laws];” and “to take measures 

against persons holding public office or officials who are absent from meetings without good cause or who are found 

by the High Representative to be in violation of legal commitments made under the Peace Agreement or the terms 

of its implementation.” In other words, he could fire directly elected or legally appointed officials at will. Office 

of the High Representative, Document, Bonn Peace Implementation Conference 1997; Bosnia and Herzegovina 1998: 

Self-sustaining Structures, Conclusions, Bonn, 10 December 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int/docu/d971210a.htm.

51. Lt. Col. Devlin, Commander, 1st RCR Battle Group, told the author that the IPTF officials in Drvar informed 

him there was insufficient evidence to proceed. 

52. Recorded interview conducted by Dr. James K. Orzech, Historian, HQ SFOR, at the Residency, Sarajevo, on 

5 October 1998. Members of the team were Cpl. (USMCR) Lynn E. Blanke, SSG (USMCR) Michael Hall, MAJ (USAR) 

Julio Dunich (ironically a Croatian-American), Cpl John Newman, UK. Interview in custody of Dr. Orzech. 

53. HQ, Combined Joint Civil Military Task Force, Briefing for Mr. Feith, Director Bosnia Task Force, Sarajevo, 

Bosnia-Herzegovina, 27 August 1998, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Visit of Mr. 

Peter Feith, Director, Bosnia Task Force, 27 August 1998.

54. General Clark interview with author.
23

55. Ibid.

56. Office of the High Representative, Press Release, Joint OHR/OSCE Press Release, Drvar Arbitration Award, 

Sarajevo, 16 September 1999. Available at http://www.ohr.int/press/p990916b.htm.

57. According to Major General K. J. Drewienkiewicz, earlier Chief of Staff at LANDCENT/SFOR, then 

commander of the SFOR logistics command, and, at the time of the Drvar riot, Military Advisor to the High 

Representative. OHR officials contracted for particular jobs, of set duration, in particular locations. To send an OHR 

official to Drvar required finding a senior officer willing to go and giving him time to clear up his affairs in Sarajevo 

and at home, before moving over to what is, more or less, a Balkan frontier town.

58. Office of the High Representative, Information. Available at http://www.ohr.int/info/info.htm.

59. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to General Maurice Baril, Canadian Chief of 

Defence, National Defence Headquarters, dated 23 December, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Notebook, 

Signature Files (Meigs). General Meigs is responding to a letter written by General Baril to General Shinseki in July, 

indicating the changes noted in the text.

CHAPTER 2

LAST CINCUSAREUR:

SERVICE COMPONENT COMMANDER

General William Crouch was the first of three commanders of US Army Europe to lead US 

and international peace implementation forces in Bosnia. Crouch was the last Commander, 

Implementation Force (COMIFOR) and the first Commander, Stabilization Force (COMSFOR). 

But before he was either of these, he was the last Commander in Chief, US Army, Europe, 

CINCUSAREUR1 and like his successors the Army service component commander in the US 

European Command (EUCOM). It was as CINCUSAREUR that he first led US forces in peace 

operations. As CINCUSAREUR, General Crouch prepared forces for the Bosnia mission, 

conducted the first rail-based theater-strategic deployment of land forces off of the map of 

NATO countries, assembled forces on the Sava River, and conducted what may have been the 

largest non-exercise deliberate river crossing in Europe since the crossing of the Rhine in World 

War II. Then he provided US national oversight, support, and sustainment of forces committed 

to NATO once they were turned over to NATO operational control. In 1996, Crouch was 

appointed to NATO Command of Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT). He 

prepared that headquarters for deployment to Bosnia, replaced both the Implementation Force 

(IFOR) and Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) headquarters, and, while 

continuing to act as CINCUSAREUR, commanded NATO operations in Bosnia until departing 

in July 1997 for appointment as US Army Vice Chief of Staff. This chapter addresses the first 

part of General Crouch’s command, his actions and challenges as Commander in Chief, US 

Army, Europe, from December 1994 through January 1996. To understand his role, though, one 

must first understand the structural circumstances that created the requirement for the position 

of an Army service component commander, the scope of his responsibilities, and the limits on 

his authorities.

Maintaining an effective and reliably subservient armed force is a central problem of 

government. In democratic governments based on the separation of powers, this dual imperative 

of effectiveness and reliability has been compounded by an additional desire that the legislative 

body exert some control over the use of armed forces by the executive. Hopefully, this is 

done without impairing the ability of the executive to call on these forces readily to achieve 

legitimate ends. In the United States, the organizational solution adopted has led to a double 

division of function and authority that marks, irrevocably, the shape of American participation 

in military operations. Authority over US military affairs is divided constitutionally between 

the Congress, which creates, regulates, and sustains military forces, and the executive branch, 

which commands and employs those forces to pursue national objectives. 

Congress has enacted a body of law governing military organization.2 In the Department 

of Defense (DOD), command of the US Armed Forces is divided into two chains of authority, 

both united only in the statutory power of the Secretary of Defense and the constitutional 

charter of the President. Operational command extends from the President through the 

Secretary of Defense, together called the National Command Authorities (NCA), to a small 

number of territorial or functional, unified, and specified combatant military commanders. 

All operational military forces are attached or assigned to the several combatant commands.3

A civilian secretariat and a joint military staff support the Secretary of Defense. The latter is 

styled the Joint Staff, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) heads it. The Secretary 

of Defense and the President may receive professional advice, individually or collectively, 

from the JCS, a committee chaired by the Chairman, made up of the professional heads of the 

several services, the Chairman, and a Vice Chairman. The Chairman, who is not in the chain of 

25
26

command of the several theater commanders, is the principal military adviser to the President, 

the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council (NSC). He is charged personally 

with providing advice on strategy and policy formulation and assisting in strategic direction of 

the armed forces, to which end he may be designated as the channel of communication between 

the NCA and combatant commanders. The Chairman is also responsible for strategic planning 

and advice on requirements, programs, and budgets; provides recommendations on roles and 

missions; promulgates joint doctrine; and coordinates joint professional education.4 The law 

allows for other members of the JCS to offer dissent from the Chairman’s advice and to provide 

recommendations to Congress after notifying the Secretary of Defense.5 

Responsibility for raising, organizing, training, equipping, sustaining, and demobilizing 

the armed forces is assigned to separate service departments in DOD.6 Each is led by its own 

service secretary. The service secretary is directly subordinate, like the joint commanders, 

to the Secretary of Defense. A civilian secretariat and a military staff support each service 

secretary. At the top of the military staff is the professional head of the respective service who 

is also a member of the JCS. Each regional combatant command is assigned subordinate service 

component headquarters whose commanders are responsible simultaneously to the combatant 

commander for operational matters and to their respective service secretaries for departmental 

duties. Under the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, combatant commanders were given great 

authority over the conduct of operations and all forces in their areas of responsibility (AOR). 

However, the resources on which their operations and headquarters depend are retained largely 

in departmental hands until they are provided to the commander by the Secretary of Defense to 

achieve particular ends. Deployment and active employment of even the smallest force remains 

a jealously reserved prerogative of the President and Secretary of Defense. Resources flow 

through component commanders from departments. Budgets and force structure decisions 

remain departmental matters in the final analysis, although, as indicated, the JCS Chairman 

advises the Secretary of Defense on the fit of departmental resources to current and projected 

missions and, through the Joint Vision process, on the nation’s military future.7 The upshot of 

all this is that the service component commander plays a vital role in any combatant command, 

but it is a role largely ignored by service officers until confronted by a combat command 

mission involving their services. Service component commanders link combatant commanders 

with the necessary resources to accomplish their missions. They are also the repository of 

technical expertise in the employment and capability of service forces and, to a great extent, 

the operational planning capability in any joint command. All the USAREUR commanders 

considered hereafter served as Army service component commander for the US Commander 

in Chief, Europe (CINCEUR), as well as COMSFOR. It is therefore appropriate to begin the 

study of senior leaders in peace operations by considering the first COMSFOR in his initial role 

as the commanding general of US Army forces in Europe. (NOTE: Secretary of Defense Donald 

Rumsfeld in 2002 abolished the practice of denominating regional combatabt commanders by 

the term “commander in chief.” Since they were so denominated during the period covered by 

this study, however, I shall continue to use the term and its abbreviation CINC.)

In December 1994, General Crouch was appointed CINCUSAREUR and Seventh Army, the 

latter a vestigial title with little practical meaning beyond preserving the notion of operational 

command in what is principally a departmental headquarters. In his brief remarks at the changeof-command ceremony in Heidelberg, Germany, Crouch expressed his admiration for what the 

European Army had accomplished in executing the post-Cold War drawdown, his appreciation 

for the opportunity to return to Europe to command Army forces, and his intention to build on 

the foundation left by his predecessor. He made no promises and gave no guidance other than 

the admonition to his listeners to have a safe holiday season. He then started to become familiar 

with his new command.8 He would devote almost 90 days to doing that.
27

EUCOM, USAREUR’s higher headquarters, is located near Stuttgart, Germany. The 

EUCOM AOR extends from northern Norway to the tip of South Africa. It includes the NATO 

nations, Israel, and the old satellite states of the former Soviet Union. By convention, the 

EUCOM commander also serves as NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), 

and is quartered near Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE), in Mons, 

Belgium. General Crouch came to Headquarters, US Army Europe (USAREUR), in Heidelberg, 

at the end of a cascading reduction of forces that had reduced a once mighty land component of 

204,3009 to 69,49610 on the way to a design end strength of 65,000, 3,000 of which were reservists, 

to be achieved in October 1996.11 The rapid reduction in strength, accompanied by numerous 

unit transfers, reflaggings (changing unit identities), demobilizations, station closings, and 

consolidations, had come close to destroying the internal fabric of the Europe-based Army. 

The Secretary of Defense, Dr. William Perry, told General Crouch that his most important 

mission in Europe would be engagement with former Warsaw Pact nations, principally through 

Partnership for Peace (PfP). The Army Chief of Staff told General Crouch his Army mission was 

to stabilize the European Army as the drawdown came to an end. General George Joulwan, 

CINCEUR and SACEUR, invited General Crouch and his wife to spend some time at SHAPE 

Headquarters in Mons on their way into the new command. Joulwan’s purpose was to help 

General Crouch understand that the principal purpose of US Army forces in Europe was the 

support of NATO and to educate him about the NATO structure. Joulwan, like Perry, also 

made the point that the principal focus of NATO and US Forces in Europe in 1994 was building 

contacts with the various East European armies through execution of the US military policy 

of Engagement and Enlargement. NATO at the time was consumed with three issues: (1) the 

question of enlargement--extending NATO membership to former Warsaw Pact states; (2) the 

acceptability of “Out of Area” missions; and (3) establishing mechanisms for forming combined 

joint task forces (CJTFs) to execute NATO operations.12 Within months, Bosnia would involve 

NATO and USAREUR in the second and third of these issues. 

Both Generals Joulwan and Crouch consider this short visit to have been of vital importance 

in establishing a common understanding between the two commanders at the outset of Crouch’s 

tour as CINCUSAREUR.13 The USAREUR commander concluded that his principal missions 

from his combatant commander, General Joulwan, were to

1. Provide trained and ready forces;

2. Promote regional stability;

3. Deploy USAREUR forces;

4. Conduct force reception, staging, onward movement, and integration to support operational requirements;

5. Provide C3I (command, control, communications, and intelligence) for assigned and 

attached forces; and,

6. Sustain and protect U.S. forces and allied forces when directed and authorized.14

The requirement to “deploy USAREUR forces” contained a paradox inherent in the national 

force structure decisions of the early 1990s. Dual commitment of forces had become the norm. 

Specifically, in addition to training and maintaining combat readiness and performing routine 

theater missions in Europe like Engagement and Enlargement, Europe-based V Corps had to be 

prepared to deploy to the Middle East to fight under the US Central Command (CENTCOM). 

CENTCOM’s theater in Southwest Asia addresses one of the US strategic major regional 

contingencies, the validated national strategic-military priorities against which, in theory 

anyway, US military forces were to be organized, equipped, manned, and trained. 15 Thus V 

Corps, which contained most of the USAREUR troop strength, found itself stationed in and 
28

assigned to one theater, having all the responsibilities thereby entailed, while simultaneously 

being responsible for readying to go to war in another theater of higher declared strategicmilitary priority. 

Such was the organizational and command context from 1992 to 1995 even while the 

USAREUR commander closely watched the bloody civil war on the borders of NATO in the 

territories of the former Titoist state of Yugoslavia. Although Europe was no longer considered 

a major theater of war, that by no means meant that Europe had lost its overall strategic priority, 

that NATO’s in-house missions were no longer important, or that they would not be allowed to 

interfere with preparations for other, perhaps more important but less immediate contingencies. 

In short, probabilities subjectively arrived at by political leaders at the moment of decision 

continued to affect long-term military calculus. America’s continuing role in Europe’s peace 

still proved too important to ignore.

During the first 7 months of command, General Crouch focused on reconciling not 

always entirely compatible goals: developing a stable power projection force, living well 

within a disciplined budget, training and readying for conventional combat, and supporting 

an expanding program of bilateral and multilateral international exchanges and training 

activities.16 After September 1995, as he was engaged increasingly in planning and preparing to 

deploy up to a third of his command to Bosnia and continuing to conduct more routine theater 

missions with what remained, General Crouch received an additional task from the Army 

Chief of Staff. He was to create significant new operating efficiencies to bring USAREUR costs 

within the range of those of continental United States (CONUS)-based forces. Failing to do that 

almost surely risked losing the residual but still strategically desirable capability to maintain a 

forward-deployed land combat force in Western Europe.

General Crouch was not new to Europe. He had served there four times before, albeit during 

the Cold War. He had commanded the elite 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment in VII Corps during 

the mid-1980s. Most of Crouch’s assignments as a company and field grade officer had been 

in the cavalry arm of the heavy force, a testimony to his professional reputation. Repetitive 

assignments to cavalry regiments in the armor community were highly and increasingly 

competitive. It was therefore of signal importance when Crouch was placed in command of the 

2d Cavalry Regiment at the insistence of the then 1st Armored Division commander designate, 

Major General Crosbie Saint. Crouch succeeded Colonel David Maddox as commander of the 

2d Cavalry. Coincidentally, he succeeded Maddox again as CINCUSAREUR. 

Crouch’s executive officer in the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Montgomery C. Meigs, had 

been Maddox’s operations officer. When General Crouch assumed command of USAREUR, 

Meigs, now a brigadier general selected for promotion to major general, was Maddox’s deputy 

chief of staff for operations (DCSOPS). Meigs continued to serve Crouch in that position until 

Meigs assumed command of the 3d Infantry Division, later reflagged as the 1st. Meigs’ division 

would provide much of the manpower fill and training support for Bosnia-bound forces in 

1995. Meigs would go to Bosnia as Commander, Task Force (TF) Eagle and Multinational 

Division-North (MND-N) in 1996, when General Crouch, as COMLANDCENT, became the 

final COMIFOR and then the first COMSFOR. In October 1998, Meigs became USAREUR 

commander and COMSFOR himself.

Following command of the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment, Crouch served as chief of staff 

of the Army’s VII Corps in Europe; assistant division commander of the 4th Infantry Division at 

Fort Carson, Colorado; and commander of the 5th Mechanized Division and Fort Polk, Louisiana. 

At Fort Polk, Crouch received recognition for developing a technique called “lane training” to 

maintain training efficiency in units short of funding and personnel and low on the Army’s 

priority list. He returned to Europe in December 1994 after an assignment as Commander, 

Eighth Army, and Chief of Staff, US Forces Korea, Combined Forces Command, and United 
29

Nations Command Korea.17 

General Crouch is a distinguished and austere man of guarded and private habits. Like 

most four-star generals, his is a commanding presence, even in casual civilian attire. Those who 

worked with him at USAREUR remember him as having a phenomenal grasp of detail and a 

limited tolerance for slackness, either professional or moral. Those who failed to live up to his 

expectations were discarded quickly and permanently. Those who demonstrated competence 

and deep accurate knowledge of their responsibilities were entrusted with authority and the 

commander’s confidence. Crouch described his office habits and personal requirements to his 

staff in a January staff meeting. He began his day, he said, with a run at 0600. He was in the 

office around 0800, with his first appointment at 0900, unless there was a problem of unusual 

urgency or he had called for someone. After 1600, his calendar closed and he did paperwork 

until 1900, as staff officers remember. He preferred to be briefed in his office by action officers, 

and he expected the chief of staff to know everything he knew. He did not like to travel with 

a large entourage. He was a stickler for an organized environment and good police. He 

expected discussion, but once a decision was made, public dialogue was over. He did invite 

his principals to come to him in private if they anticipated a problem consequent to a decision.18

Some members of the staff also recall in retrospect that he was far more tolerant of bad news 

delivered first in private so it did not surprise him when it came up in a more general forum.

General Crouch also gave some indication of where he was headed. The term “drawdown” 

was to be removed from the lexicon and replaced with stabilization. His CINC’s Initiatives 

Group drafted a set of policy memoranda that he had directed, and the staff was permitted 

to comment. Once signed, they were the rule. He expected a positive attitude in dealings 

with higher, lower, and adjacent headquarters. He found courtesy, appearance, and attitude 

important. He believed in physical training and expected his headquarters personnel to pass 

their physical fitness tests. He left two charges with his staff: “Teach subordinates about ethical 

standards. Leadership must exemplify them. Unethical conduct undermines the command and 

authority. Leaders must do something about unethical behavior if it is found.” Then, in regard 

to training, he observed: “We can’t do everything right. We can do some things well. We must 

figure out what we are going to do, apply the resources, do it and do it well. Conversely we 

must decide where to take risks.”19 In other meetings, he described himself as a mechanic, not a 

visionary, and he gave as his general intention the goal “to do less better.” He believed cohesive 

units win. Therefore, unit integrity should be protected and racial understanding promoted. 

Finally, he believed that people do what gets checked. General Crouch proved to be a rigorous 

checker.

While he waited to issue his policy papers, General Crouch set out to get to know his 

command from the bottom up. He traveled to each USAREUR activity and community to see 

for himself what the new Army in Europe looked like. His wife, Vicki, accompanied him on 

these trips. Mrs. Crouch was not just an arm decoration; she was a member of the firm. Her 

interests were substantive and broad, and she knew what she was looking for. Her brief was 

quality-of-life, a key part of General Crouch’s design for a stable USAREUR. When the couple 

arrived in a community, General Crouch would go off to visit tactical units and Mrs. Crouch, 

usually accompanied by the commander’s assistant executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gene 

Kamena, and Ms. Diane Devens, Chief of the Community and Family Support Division, Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. Community officials would brief Mrs. Crouch and 

her party on medical support, family issues, Army Community Services staffing, and conditions 

in community schools. She would meet with unit and community Family Support Groups 

and solicit their concerns. Mrs. Crouch had learned a lot about how Army family support 

organs were trained, funded, and organized when General Crouch commanded Fort Polk, 

often, General Crouch recalls, working 8-hour days herself in the process. Now that experience 
30

paid off, and clever staff officers learned that her judgment could carry a lot of weight in the 

decision process. Later, when General Crouch deployed to Bosnia, Mrs. Crouch maintained 

her schedule of visits from Heidelberg, generally spending 2 days a week on the road with Ms. 

Devens and the commander’s assistant executive officer, visiting USAREUR communities from 

which soldiers were deployed. Back in Heidelberg, she would debrief her findings to Major 

General Bob Coffey, the USAREUR Chief of Staff. This gave General Crouch confidence that 

the families depending on him were being taken care of and showed them in a practical way the 

commander’s continued concern for their care and welfare.

General Crouch arrived in Europe with a reputation as one of the Army’s premier trainers, 

and it was the process of disciplined training to exacting standards that he would use as the 

backbone method to accomplish all his missions. 

The 1980s had been a period of renaissance for the US Army. In the wake of the Vietnam 

War, the Army reinvented itself. It rewrote its operational and tactical doctrine and reorganized, 

reequipped, retrained, and ultimately reconstituted itself as the world’s premier land force. It 

finished the process of reform by documenting a training regime of great sophistication under 

the leadership of General Carl Vuono, Army Chief of Staff from 1987 to 1991. From the doctrine 

in Field Manual (FM) 25-100, Training the Force, and FM 25-101, Battle Focused Training, General 

Crouch derived a universal eight-step training process that his speechwriters promptly illustrated 

as a step pyramid. The eight-step process was a discipline to be enforced on USAREUR. In 

many ways, it was the ethic by which General Crouch conducted his professional life. The 

hallmark of the system was a belief in the enforcement of demanding but explicit standards of 

performance in all things: doing things right the first time according to system. General Crouch 

believed in using doctrine, and he believed particularly in Army training doctrine.

Given his interest in training, it is characteristic that one of General Crouch’s early visits 

was to the Seventh Army Training Center (ATC) at Grafenwöhr in Bavaria. His concerns at 

the outset of his command are reflected in the briefing notes prepared during and after the 

visit. As the staff conducted its activity briefings, General Crouch took particular interest in the 

formal courses run by the Seventh ATC in their “schoolhouse.” Properly trained leaders who 

knew what right looked like were the key to his system. As his first priority, he designated 

the USAREUR commander’s courses for company, battalion, and brigade commanders. He 

inquired about the spouse training sections, who instructed, and what was presented. He 

directed that spouse sections be expanded to all commander courses.

He told the Seventh ATC commander and his staff that he intended to emphasize external 

evaluations for corps and theater troops (generally separate brigades and battalions) and on the 

broad area of leader development training. Leaders were the key to effective units. Evaluators 

were also essential. General Crouch indicated that his number one assignment priority involved 

selecting and assigning qualified, high-quality observer controllers to the Combat Maneuver 

Training Center (CMTC) at nearby Hohenfels. Finally, he discussed the living conditions in the 

region, facilities, schools, driving distances to facilities, and available housing. The notetaker 

observed, “Mrs. Crouch also participated in the discussion.”20

The DCSOPS, Brigadier General Meigs, briefed General Crouch on a revised mission 

statement for USAREUR, derived from the National Security and National Military Strategy 

documents, and subsequently on a mission-essential task list (METL) based on this mission and 

checked for consistency with the EUCOM commander’s task list. These topics were followed 

by presentation of a training strategy to accomplish the approved tasks, developed in response 

to this mission analysis. In short, the CINCUSAREUR applied Army training doctrine at the 

top.21

General Crouch might call himself a mechanic, but he showed his penetrating thirst for 

information during the mission briefing. He sent the staff back for more detail. He wanted 
31

an audit trail to show how each part of the mission was derived. He wanted to see for himself 

what the source documents said and how the staff synthesized each part into the resulting 

mission statement. What he wanted was a complete mission analysis with a detailed summary 

of specified and implied tasks with appropriate references. According to General Crouch’s key 

staff members, this deep and detailed mission analysis, conducted personally with a small group 

of advisers, was characteristic. Later, in LANDCENT, the senior staff would use the term “going 

to the zinc mines,” a reference to the hard, detailed, preliminary thinking to be done with the 

commander before heading off to accomplish the mission.22

The briefing on METL tasks was just as painstaking. Each term was examined for precision 

of expression. The notes from these discussions show clearly that the CINC was crafting a 

document both to inform himself and to convey to subordinate commands just what USAREUR 

was going to be about. He was interested in the command’s responsibilities to integrate forces 

forward in the reception, staging, onward movement, and integration (RSOI) process that 

described how USAREUR would accept and forward reinforcing elements essential to fill 

out any tactical unit dispatched from the command. He insisted on including the words “in 

accordance with U.S. law” in reference to providing support or protection to allies. His concern, 

he said at the time, was to make sure subordinate commanders understood the need for legal 

review before helping allies. He wanted to keep subordinate commanders out of trouble and 

keep external agencies from misunderstanding what USAREUR was training to do.23 He also 

directed that family support be added to the task list as a separate supporting task. Events of the 

year proved all these matters well-considered.

Discussion of the METL tasks inevitably evolved into an opportunity for the CINC to share 

his training philosophy with those of his staff who were to implement it. What did he believe? 

First, he said that he believed in the process in FM 25-100, and he intended to talk to his company 

commanders about using it. (General Crouch was meeting with new company commanders 

during the afternoon, another reason for coming to Seventh ATC.) He believed in command 

certification, that is, the commanders’ personal responsibility to attest to the readiness of his 

force to perform a specific set of tasks before deployment. This was not a trivial requirement, 

and it would loom large in preparing US forces for movement into Bosnia.

General Crouch added his positive interest in and intent to support the various programs of 

military-to-military contact with former Eastern bloc nations. He expressed particular interest 

in helping subordinates understand the importance of these programs to national strategic 

goals. A USAREUR Military Relations Program would become a major feature of his USAREUR 

command. The program would bear the stamp of his belief in the eight-step training process 

and in performing every task to high and productive standards. 

General Crouch summed up his training philosophy as an unwavering belief in the METL 

process. He expected a progressive and sequential process of training in Europe in which homestation training was conducted to prepare units for major training area (MTA) training (gunnery 

at Grafenwöhr) and CMTC (force-on-force at Hohenfels) rotations. All training was to be 

resourced and evaluated externally from two levels up (for example, battalion observes platoons, 

brigade observes companies). All collective training was to incorporate the Multiple Integrated 

Laser Engagement Systems (MILES), an opposing force (OPFOR), observer controllers, afteraction reviews (AARs), and a retraining system. The object was to achieve standards outright or 

to train until you did. To get it right, he said he was willing to do less better: quality was more 

important than frequency.24

The conference ended with a discussion of the CINC’s intentions for the ATLANTIC RESOLVE 

exercise. ATLANTIC RESOLVE was a complex, multiechelon, multiagency, theater-level war 

game created by General Dave Maddox.25 It replaced the old Cold War-era REFORGER exercises, 

which trained forces to execute the European General Defense Plans and demonstrated at least 
32

notional reinforcement capability. ATLANTIC RESOLVE was to exercise European commands 

on the new reality in which Europe had become a force-projection platform for extracontinental 

threats. The 1994 ATLANTIC RESOLVE was a complex amalgam of games designed to combine 

political-military play with force projection and combat maneuver simulation in what was called 

an electronic Synthetic Theater of War-Europe (STOW-E). General Maddox had brought to the 

task a lifetime of operations research and combat developments experience. He had framed a 

complex program of overlapping, progressive, and sequential war games. These were designed 

to combine the dual objectives of pushing the envelope of large-scale electronic simulation, in 

line with then Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan’s interests in Army Warfighting 

Experiments, and anticipating the political and military issues of a major deployment. 

The exercise postulated a large offshore landmass in the Atlantic Ocean. Play culminated 

with an electronically simulated corps-level battle. What was in some ways unique about the 

exercise was the extent to which the design provided documented insights and lessons learned. 

General Maddox had hired a former commandant of the Army War College, retired Major 

General Bill Stofft, to lead a select team to compile this data in a formal report. The task was 

the start of a long-term relationship between successive USAREUR commanders and General 

Stofft. The result was that General Crouch started his tour with a large notebook in which were 

recorded systematically the problems likely to arise in any large-scale deployment. Not least 

important were the political-military difficulties he could expect but could do little as service 

component commander to remedy before the fact. ATLANTIC RESOLVE 94 did much to alert 

USAREUR to problems that would arise again within the year. Meanwhile, General Crouch 

directed his DCSOPS to tie USAREUR to ATLANTIC RESOLVE; that is, he was to conduct a 

follow-on exercise in 2 years that built on the experience gained in the first. For his part, General 

Meigs, a veteran of the first exercise that had been run on a sometimes highly erratic schedule, 

determined to put ATLANTIC RESOLVE 96 together as a fully integrated, progressive, eventdriven sequence reflecting a sort of organic growth from concept to execution according to 

predictable stages.26 

Finally, General Crouch initiated a senior officer training program (SOTP) so he could 

focus the organization, familiarize his immediate subordinates with the functions of the Army 

echelon in Europe, and work personally to develop his immediate subordinates. He included 

spouses in the 2- or 3-day quarterly sessions and actively sought to involve them in USAREUR 

quality-of-life decisions. The CINC solicited spouse views and took them seriously, actively 

seeking, through Mrs. Crouch’s community activities and spouse SOTP sessions, to create an 

environment of continuous, family-focused command involvement. Initially, the SOTP was a 

means of preparing for ATLANTIC RESOLVE 96. The first session took the officers to SHAPE 

Headquarters on a NATO familiarization trip designed to parallel General Crouch’s visit with 

General Joulwan on the way into command. Crouch used staff rides at Waterloo and in and 

around Berlin to lead his subordinates to think about army level operations, including, in 

Berlin, the difficulties of combat in cities. In the year after the Bosnia deployment, the SOTP 

became a way to exchange information periodically on the health of the home front and lay the 

groundwork for a thorough AAR of USAREUR’s role in Bosnia.27

It is significant that General Crouch settled into his new command in this fashion. By the 

time he issued his policy guidance in April, he had seen almost all of his command, and his 

command had seen him. He had drawn conclusions about the state of training and conditions 

of life in USAREUR that would permit him to set priorities and the terms within which 

subordinates would work to realize his goals for the command. When a challenging mission 

was assigned in the fall, he knew his command and its strengths and weakness. He could 

direct the preparations for the Bosnia deployment with an accurate, firsthand knowledge of his 

instrument. In addition, the process by which he took command and established his command 
33

policies was in itself a model of what he expected from his subordinates.

In April 1995, General Crouch issued his campaign plan for USAREUR in the form of a 

set of USAREUR command policy letters.28 Simultaneously he published over his signature 

a document titled “USAREUR STATEMENT OF PURPOSE,” which lays down the CINC’s 

vision and philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of knowing and applying doctrine and 

maintaining high standards, and it introduces, as a formal command obligation, providing for 

the welfare of families during unexpected deployments. Preparation of Army Family Support 

Teams became an explicit training goal for USAREUR so soldiers “can have confidence that their 

families will be looked after.” 

Finally, as a matter of command policy, the CINC stated his intention for soldiers assigned 

to Europe to enjoy a good quality of life. His part would be setting standards for the work 

place; demanding predictability in routine duty days and schedules, hence predictability in offduty and family time; and providing first-rate services in chapels, clinics, schools, exchanges, 

commissaries, service agencies, and recreational facilities. General Crouch was convinced that 

life in Europe should be an incentive to service there, and he set himself the task to make it so. 

To the extent he could, he also expressed personal concern in the same issues when troops were 

deployed, setting high standards for living conditions, personally designing base camp exercise 

facilities, and going to see that standards of troop care were achieved in timely fashion.

Behind the statement of purpose was the series of command policy letters. Most were 

approved around the middle of April, 4 months after General Crouch assumed command. Some, 

of course, are no more than common bread-and-butter policy statements restating departmental 

policy with little or no deviation, e.g., those dealing with preventing discrimination and sexual 

harassment29 or affirmative employment and equal employment opportunity.30 Others made 

explicit the commander’s standards for routine matters such as aircrew selection and training 

management,31 military vehicle safety and dispatch procedures,32 troop safety,33 and command 

inspection programs.34 A third category implemented programs that were to create the kind of 

force General Crouch had been sent to Europe to develop: a stable force, living well, trained, and 

ready. 

The first USAREUR Command Policy Letter contained the Command Training Guidance.35

This policy letter, of course, incorporated the guidance already given at the Seventh ATC. A 

few points are worth emphasizing. The letter made clear that training was the first priority and 

combat training would be paramount.36 The letter restated the USAREUR mission and listed the 

derived command METL. Having charged the command to give priority to combat training, the 

letter went into some detail about the need to combine this training with peace operations. The 

commander emphasized the importance of the USAREUR Military Relations Program, calling 

the various forms of military-to-military exercises “active engagement defined,” “our theater’s 

most visible contribution to the national military strategy,” and “our nation’s primary interest . . 

. with international impact.”37 Heretofore, receiving nations often treated these exercises as little 

more than political photo opportunities.38 The CINC inserted two instructions to emphasize 

that his intent was that they have more substance. First, he directed that any such exercise 

committing a company would have chain-of-command representation through a vertical 

slice representing battalion, brigade, and division levels. Second, because of the importance 

of the program, the Military Relations Program was one place where the CINC would accept 

violation of the requirement for advance planning required by the FM 25-101 training process 

while expecting professional execution notwithstanding. “Professional execution of these 

activities is a top USAREUR training policy.”39 The letter also mandated that units prepare 

for peace operations as well as traditional combat. Most notably, the training guidance drew 

attention to the increased importance of involving chaplains, legal advisers, and civil and public 

affairs personnel, mandating increased attention to developing “systems for dealing with the 
34

media.”40

The letter then discussed leader training and noncommissioned officer time (5 hours, normally 

Thursday mornings41), both of which had their own specific policy letters;42 maintenance and 

accountability of equipment; the central place of the ATLANTIC RESOLVE exercise in the 

USAREUR training program; and the overall training strategy (discussed above). The letter 

laid down the requirement for external evaluation as a basis for assessment and certification of 

units.

The term “certification” is of critical importance to leaders: it is a Personal statement by a unit 

commander that answers the higher headquarters question, “Can you do the mission?”

Commanders of units deploying for training or operations out of sector will certify their unit’s 

training status in writing to the CINCUSAREUR before deployment. Certification will address the 

readiness of personnel and equipment, the unit’s ability to perform the expected mission-essential 

tasks, and the preparedness of any rear-detachment operations. 43

While the requirement for commanders to certify a general readiness for mission 

accomplishment was admirable on the surface, it could and did grow into an onerous 

bookkeeping requirement when the level of detail extended from the unit to each individual 

in the unit, and the standard imposed was understood at the lower levels to be one of “zero 

defects.”44 For, when certification and mission accomplishment seemed to oppose each 

other under the pressure of a rapid deployment, it could appear to become a choice between 

irredeemable professional failure and absolute integrity. Finally, the requirement conflicted 

to a degree with the process that called for external evaluation two levels above the locus of 

certification. That could be taken as either supervisory verification of reports (after all, every 

subordinate unit is also part of a larger formation that also required certification) or institutional 

second-guessing when specific observations conflicted with general assessments. 

On the other hand, the requirement for certification at every level unquestionably had the 

desired effect, increasing pressure on subordinate commanders to ensure painstaking attention 

to every detail, even those that might seem trivial, yet could seriously undermine the Army’s 

credibility if exposed to the narrowly focused attention of the television camera. General Crouch 

could point with some pride to an incident in Bosnia shortly after deployment in which an 

armored High-Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) struck a mine and the crew 

members recited on the air the detailed and careful preparation they had had for the mission. 

Their recitation was important because it answered at the first instance the sort of questions of 

microscopic detail that were asked of commanders in the theater by the press and, consequently, 

by representatives of the service departments and the Joint Staff following any incident in 

which trouble befell even a single US soldier in the Balkans. Certification, however painful, 

was a means of protection against post facto second-guessing. It had its price in the burden it 

put on the integrity of commanders at lower levels, but it ensured to the greatest extent possible 

that all troopers and units were trained well and ready at the highest standards. It allowed the 

Commander in Chief to be comfortable sending the first troops into an environment not entirely 

understood by the Army in 1995.

As its penultimate provision, the letter addressed a key issue in the CINC’s program to 

bring stability to living in Europe, Time Management.45 The letter mandated that commanders 

strive for predictability and ordered that weekends not be used for training or work except as 

authorized by a division or equivalent commander and that a program of regularly scheduled 

soldier time (early departure Thursday afternoons) be enforced. The latter was combined with 

a requirement that support facilities, commissaries, exchanges, and so forth, observe extended 

hours the same evening. 46
35

USAREUR Command Policy Letter 1, Command Training Guidance, was the most important 

management document issued by the USAREUR commander, and he meant for it to be enforced, 

not least by his own involvement in every CMTC and MTA rotation. It was seconded by specific 

guidance in those areas of particular concern to the CINC. In addition to those already mentioned, 

there were letters addressing a detailed outline for semiannual commander’s training briefings,47

unit cohesion,48 physical fitness programs,49 single-soldier quality of life,50 Army family teambuilding,51 sponsorship,52 and community inprocessing and Inprocessing Training Centers.53 In 

all, 27 USAREUR Command Policy Letters laid down the CINC’s standards for his command. 

Together, they added up to an integrated program to increase training effectiveness and create a 

more stable and satisfying environment for USAREUR troops and families. In addition to welltrained, well-led units performing important missions and ready to deploy on short notice, the 

program emphasized giving soldiers confidence that their families would be taken care of when 

they deployed and that their schedules and, most important, free time were predictable. The 

object was: “When their tour is finished, soldiers and families [return] to CONUS with the good 

news that USAREUR is an exciting, caring, great place to work.”54

On 1 May 1995, the DCSOPS, Brigadier General Meigs, responding to a tasking from General 

Crouch, sent him a briefing explaining both the situation in USAREUR and the direction of the 

CINC’s policies.55 The briefing has some telling statistics. The drawdown numbers (66 percent 

reduction) have already been addressed. The briefing pointed out that V Corps was a very 

reduced organization with a brigade-sized corps artillery, no armored cavalry regiment, a halfstrength corps aviation structure, and two understrength divisions.56 The theater troops had 

also been reduced: only two Patriot battalions made up the theater air defense brigade, and the 

21st Theater Army Area Command (TAACOM), the theater army logistics command, had been 

reduced by one-third. Indeed, 21st TAACOM was at a low Authorized Level of Organization 

(ALO) 3 and was structured essentially only for peacetime theater subsistence missions. The 

Perspectives briefing pointed out that the USAREUR budget had decreased from $6 billion 

to $2.5 billion (59 percent). The briefing outlined the development of the training program 

(discussed previously), plans for ATLANTIC RESOLVE 96, and arrangements for NATO 

commitments. Most notably, in light of subsequent developments, the 1st Armored Division 

was already designated to deploy with the ARRC should the NATO Rapid Reaction Force be 

assigned a mission in the Balkans (or elsewhere), with augmentation as required from the 3d 

Infantry Division.57

In the spring of 1995, 1,600 USAREUR soldiers were deployed outside of the NATO region.58

They were in Italy and Croatia providing logistics and medical support under EUCOM 

Operation PROVIDE PROMISE; watching the border of the former Yugoslavian Republic of 

Macedonia as TF Able Sentry, part of the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) 

observation mission; maintaining the Cyprus air bridge and providing other support for the 

Embassy in Beirut; providing humanitarian assistance in Operation PROVIDE COMFORT 

in Incirlik, Turkey; and operating an air defense artillery battalion in Saudi Arabia as part of 

CENTCOM Operation DESERT VIGILANCE. A medical team was deployed to the Ukraine, 

and Creole speakers were deployed to Haiti. A calculation was made to measure the percent 

of time soldiers would be away from their home base in a 3-year period (1994-96) for recurring 

training and ABLE SENTRY rotations only. Mechanized infantry battalions were found to be 

absent 43 percent of the time; brigade headquarters, which bore most of the training cost with 

evaluation two levels down, were gone 53 percent of the time; and division senior leaders 

were absent 56 percent of the time.59 These calculations were base figures before the Bosnia 

deployments and did not reflect the ambitious Military Relations Program with its requirement 

for a chain-of-command slice to be present with every company deployment. Europe was 

extremely busy and was getting ready to become even more so. These figures make it clear how 
36

little room for maneuver the CINC actually had to mitigate the intense personnel tempo for his 

units, even before he had to send a third of his command to conduct operations in Bosnia. Short 

of reducing mission training or declining National Military Strategy taskings, there simply was 

not much relief available, even with the best intentions to do less better.

Another briefing, prepared for delivery at the Association of the United States Army in May 

1995, addressed many of the same issues and added discussion of initiatives to assure quality of 

life.60 Here, General Crouch pointed to an interesting technique he had inherited and continued 

to refine. It had to do with standards, a topic near and dear to his own heart. As a result of the 

drawdown, the Europe-based Army, like the CONUS Army, found itself with excess real estate 

and facilities. To find further cost savings in Europe, one had to reduce excess infrastructure

--redundant facilities and especially unnecessary communities. But to identify excess, one first 

had to define adequacy. USAREUR had set forth 33 quality-of-life standards. These defined 

access, availability, and quality for various facilities such as clinics, gyms, housing areas, and 

dining and postal facilities.61 Given this set of standards, General Crouch could continue with 

a systematic program of base closings and unit consolidations to reduce operating costs. He 

assigned this task to the DCSOPS Force Modernization Division, led by retired Colonel Bill 

Chesarek. Chesarek recalls that Crouch soon led him to a systematic procedure for developing 

recommendations for base closings (which required coordination with the German Government) 

and troop relocations (which did not). This process involved creating a multidisciplinary process 

action team, detailed analysis, and engagement of major subordinate commanders before the 

final product was presented to the CINC for decision. The process was designed to address the 

following four basic questions:

1. Can you do the mission as well or better?

2. Do soldiers and families live as well or better?

3. Will it be cheaper?

4. Are there major strategic or political/military factors that should influence the 

decision?62

The final decision criterion was: “If life is better--do it now! Life as good saves money. Do 

it!”63

Pursuing this program, General Crouch’s command identified cost avoidance of more than 

10 percent in the operations and maintenance budget.64 These savings would be eclipsed by 

requirements imposed on the command in September as the Army Chief of Staff confronted 

requirements to reduce current costs to free funds for modernization. General Crouch summoned 

his principal commanders, already heavily engaged in preparing for Bosnia, and instructed 

them to conduct a rigorous examination of USAREUR operating costs and to take the Chief’s 

reduction targets as a mission. They did. The resulting Efficiencies Program, which began 

simultaneously with preparations for the Bosnia deployment, required a major reengineering 

of USAREUR business practices, training strategy, and a major civilian workforce reduction. 

Reductions in visits to the European training centers for gunnery and maneuver training were 

designed to both save money and reduce operational tempo with the consequent degradation in 

capability as mitigated by use of simulators and home station training. It is not clear how much 

of an impact it had, coming just when Bosnia deployment was gaining momentum and when the 

cost in time of the various PfP exercises would have to be borne by one less division. Moreover, 

the Department of the Army’s attention to cost reductions in the fall of 1995 meant that rapid 

expenditure of the existing budget on preparing for a still questionable Bosnia mission would 

generate serious concerns in the Pentagon that the CINCUSAREUR would have to address.
37

In addition to physical facilities, the commander set standards for the human environment. 

In the name of predictability, he mandated a 6-week training lock-in, strict limits on weekend 

training and work, soldier time, and use of leave. He emphasized ethical and interpersonal 

relationships and programs to provide soldier and family support, among them the singlesoldier initiatives, a program for Army family team-building, and family support groups. 

Volunteer spouses administered these last two programs, with command support mandated 

at each level. These particular volunteer programs were essential in ensuring the welfare 

of service families in a theater where military absences were frequent, often distant, and 

extended. Their underlying premise was that USAREUR must behave as a family of families. 

The programs demanded a lot from leaders’ spouses throughout the chain of command and 

explained both the highly visible role of the CINC’s wife and the importance of spouse courses 

at all precommand courses.

A major complication in General Crouch’s program for achieving stability in Europe, even 

before the Bosnia deployment, involved the requirements for executing combined training 

operations with former Warsaw Pact armies while maintaining the standard combat training 

regime. Secretary of Defense Perry had adopted as one of his personal priorities the initiation of 

frequent professional contacts with former Warsaw Pact defense establishments to encourage 

and facilitate their progressive democratization. In January 1994, NATO undertook a program 

of exchanges called Partnership for Peace (PfP).65 Perry founded the Marshall Center at 

Garmish, Germany, so East European officers could mix with each other and NATO officers to 

learn how democratic militaries work within what was, to them, a new political construct. In 

addition, he charged his European commanders to establish programs of active interaction with 

their professional peers across the old Iron Curtain. 

EUCOM began working regularly and closely with US ambassadors to identify worthwhile 

activities to support individual country teams (much as General Joulwan had done in his earlier 

assignment as Commander in Chief South, where his AOR was Latin America).66 EUCOM 

had a program providing small military liaison teams to the old Cold War border states from 

Estonia to Albania. Members of these teams possessed particular skill sets useful to emerging 

democratic armies. USAREUR provided 19 of the 51 team members. Soldiers from the Reserve 

Components manned 13 of the 19 teams.67 Also, EUCOM had a program called Bridge to 

America, or the State Partnership Program. This effort linked selected state National Guards 

to various emerging nations based principally on the presence of large ethnic populations 

in the sponsoring state.68 Finally, EUCOM and its components were soon conducting shortnotice bilateral activities as the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the JCS began to visit 

individual countries and the various events.69 General Joulwan had every incentive to precede 

the Secretary’s visits both to impose a measure of control over events and to ensure proper 

financial resourcing. 

General Crouch decided early in his tenure to concentrate on programs supporting regional 

stability, in part to recognize the importance given them by his superiors and in part to shape the 

way they were conducted in light of all his conflicting priorities. He decided that if USAREUR 

was going to conduct such stability operations, it would conduct them with sufficient gravity to 

have a positive value both to the army visited and his own troops. A measure of the importance 

attached to the activities conducted under the rubric of stability operations is the fact that the PfP 

Program continued to be actively supported and expanded even when the Bosnia deployment 

had reduced the troop base available to implement it by nearly half.70 This emphasis on 

international programs was greatly facilitated by a staff reorganization, the planning for which 

predated his arrival.

More specifically, before leaving the post of DCSOPS, General Meigs reorganized his general 

staff division to focus greater energy on international and political affairs.71 This initiative had 
38

begun under General Maddox. General Crouch approved its implementation and it was finally 

ordered in May 1995. The action was carried out as part of a general realignment of duties 

for international matters in the headquarters. Under the new dispensation, the Office of the 

Political Adviser (POLAD) to the CINC was re-created under Mr. David Lange. The old office 

had been abolished after the Cold War. General Crouch eventually made the POLAD part of the 

CINC’s personal staff, as he did the CINC’s Initiatives Group, another body formed by the Meigs 

reorganization. Lange was responsible for liaison with Department of State and embassies in the 

USAREUR area. He prepared the CINC for diplomatic meetings and provided political analysis 

and advice on a wide range of policy issues. It was his job to know what was happening in the 

various political environments the CINC occupied, and General Crouch insisted that Mr. Lange 

get to know his contacts personally by traveling to meet them. The personal contacts Lange’s 

visits created within the Department of State would pay big dividends early on.72 

In addition to a new POLAD, host nation support activities were transferred to the deputy 

chief of staff for logistics (DCSLOG), and other international agreements were handed over to the 

deputy chief of staff for resource management (DCSRM). An International Operations Division 

was formed within the DCSOPS based on the old Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) Treaty 

implementation office headed by Mr. Darrell Pflaster. Pflaster had overseen Conventional Force 

Reductions under the CFE treaty and had done a good deal of confidential work as General 

Crosbie Saint’s agent for the USAREUR drawdown. Pflaster departed, and General Crouch 

brought in Colonel John Drinkwater, a former division artillery commander and a graduate of 

the Army’s School for Advanced Military Studies, to head the division. Drinkwater, an officer of 

some reputation for the power and precision of his intellect, was brought from the NATO staff, 

to which he had only just been assigned, to head the new staff directorate. His organization was 

responsible for Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other treaty 

compliance matters, the State Partnership Program, overseeing the several USAREUR liaison 

officers accredited to German state governments, and the International Policy Office, led at first 

by Mr. Paul Quintal. The International Policy Office assumed responsibility for bilateral and 

multilateral contacts, particularly PfP and In the Spirit of PfP, run under the aegis of NATO. 

Quintal later became Drinkwater’s deputy. 

Quintal engineered a more robust and systematic program of exercises conducted according 

to the 8-step training process. He had observed the dramatic failure of a program briefing to the 

CINC by his predecessor from the Exercise Division, so he began with some idea of what the 

boss wanted. It is a deliberate and characteristic feature of all Quintal’s periodic updates that his 

slides relate every phase of the international exercise program to the 8-step training process. It 

is evident that one of General Crouch’s agendas was to export the process he valued so highly to 

the emerging militaries to the east.

Paul Quintal is a quick study. He is both energetic and precise, a former artillery officer with 

experience in missiles. His skills and temperament were ideally suited to the task at hand and 

his new division chief. Quintal began producing an international exercise SOP to enable the 

responsible headquarters to execute a requirement without having to do too much discovery 

learning.73 General Crouch added the necessary command emphasis, not least by the detailed 

interest he took in each program event. 

USAREUR’s exercise program formed a major part of a larger EUCOM initiative designed 

to implement the National Military Strategy with a theaterwide system that integrated 

Department of State and DOD efforts in a productive and systematic fashion. The major 

element of the stability operations program involved executing NATO’s PfP or In the Spirit 

of PfP exercises. The principal distinction between the two programs was that PfP exercises 

were open to all PfP Members, while In the Spirit of PfP exercises were by invitation and might 

be bilateral or multilateral, at the discretion of the sponsoring nation. EUCOM coordinated 
39

requirements received from country teams, SHAPE, and the US NCA and assigned missions 

to its service components. USAREUR, as the operational headquarters responsible for landbased missions, provided funding, and assigned executive responsibility to one of its major 

subordinate commands (V Corps, Southern European Task Force (SETAF), 21st TAACOM, or 

its specialist theater troop brigades) as appropriate. 

Generally, the USAREUR operational strategy divided the European continent into five 

regions: Russia, the Ukraine, and Northern, Central, and Southeastern Europe. Exercises 

were scheduled along regional lines: V Corps handled those north of the Alps and SETAF the 

Mediterranean-Balkan region. Peacekeeping, disaster relief, or functional (communications, 

engineering, disaster relief, and medical) exercises served as the vehicles. At the start, small, 

bilateral, in the Spirit of PfP exercises were the norm, but an effort was made to work toward 

more complex multilateral exercises. Four benefits of the Stability Operations Program reform 

were better quality exercises, more systematic external funding, valuable professional contacts, 

and a degree of interoperability that paid off handsomely during subsequent peace operations 

in the Balkans. By fiscal year 1997, the program called for 15 exercises in 11 countries, with a 

total budget (projected as of 9 April) of $2.65 million.74

These programs, however, are not what General Bill Crouch is mainly remembered for 

as CINCUSAREUR. What marks these years most are his actions before, during, and after 

committing US Army forces to Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR, NATO’s peace enforcement 

operations in Bosnia in December 1995, only a year after he arrived with a charter to stabilize 

the Army in Europe.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 2

1. It had been the custom to style the Commander of US Army Europe, Commander in Chief, throughout the 

Cold War. With the passage of the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, with its clear subordination of all forces 

within a theater to a regional combatant commander, this title became anomalous. General Crouch was the last 

to hold the designation. His successors have been titled simply Commander (or Commanding General [CG]), US 

Army Europe and Seventh Army.

2. United States Code, Title 10--Armed Forces. The US Code may be accessed on line at http://www4.law.cornell. 

edu/uscode. Hereinafter, references to specific sections will be documented only to 10 US Code and the pertinent 

section number.

3. Ibid., Section 162.

4. Ibid., Section 153.

5. Ibid., Section 151.

6. Responsibilities are vested by law in the secretary of the department. For the Secretary of the Army, see Ibid., 

Section 3013. The Secretary is responsible for recruiting, organizing, supplying, equipping (including research 

and development), training, servicing, mobilizing, demobilizing, administering (including the morale and welfare 

of personnel), maintaining, the construction, outfitting, and repair of military equipment, and the construction, 

maintenance, and repair of buildings, structures, and utilities, and the acquisition of real property and interests 

in real property necessary to carry out the responsibilities specified in this section. Any claim for departmental 

responsibility will ordinarily be based upon this set of assigned departmental duties.

7. There is a review process within the operational chain of command called the Joint Requirements Oversight 

Council (JROC) that advises the Secretary of Defense from the standpoint of current readiness. Departments tend 

to take a longer term and more global view than individual combatant commanders. The Joint Vision Process is a 

process by which the services arrive at a more or less integrated vision of the future. Formally, only the Secretary 

of Defense can overrule decisions of department secretaries.
40

8. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Speech, USAREUR/7TH ARMY, CHANGE OF COMMAND 

REMARKS. The speech was found in a box of speeches prepared for General Crouch to use on various occasions. 

9. Two heavy corps and theater troops totaling 147 combat and combat support battalions.

10. One truncated corps of two equally truncated divisions and theater troops, a reduced total of 36 combat and 

combat support battalions.

11. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, The Story of the Drawdown. The USAREUR History 

Office contains a number of unprocessed records that originated in other staff divisions, but whose origin is now 

uncertain. Generally these came to the office from the Office of the Commander upon departure of one commander 

and his replacement by another. Where no origin can be determined, the facts are accepted on face value and for 

their coherence with other sources of information generally. Documentation will be to the USAREUR History 

Office only. Where the origin is clear, citation will reflect origin. In this case, these are the numbers generally in 

circulation in contemporaneous briefings.

12. Pointed out to author by Mr. David Lange, USAREUR POLAD.

13. Both Joulwan and Crouch insisted upon the importance of this with the author.

14. This formulation is from a May 1995 Briefing, assembled probably by the CinC’s Initiatives Group, for the 

Commander in Chief to deliver at the Army War College and Command and General Staff College. HQ USAREUR, 

History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Welcome to USAREUR, Slide, “Mission Essential Tasks.”

15. Major Regional Contingencies and the related term, Major Theater of War, are terms of trade referring 

to the defense of Korea and US interests the Middle East. What is important here is to note that in the scheme of 

things, and contrary to original intention, European missions were deemed by the US military to be secondary to 

engagement out of theater, at least in terms of formal war planning. See General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern 

War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 46-47.

16. These represent major repetitive themes that occur in the evolving set of briefings developed for the 

Commander in Chief to help him explain what USAREUR was doing. A frequently used depiction was a set of 

three overlapping circles, labeled STABLE FORCE, TRAINED AND READY, LIVING WELL. Within the three areas 

of overlap were written, Predictability, Stability, and Efficiency.

17. The Commander in Chief, US Forces Korea, a sub-unified command of US Pacific Command, holds a 

number of positions simultaneously, each with its own legal authorities and prerogatives. His US Chief of Staff 

serves as his chief of staff in all these positions; also, when the CINC acts as Commander 8th Army, the CINC’s 

chief of staff acts as Army Service Component Commander, for which role the Chief of Staff/Commander has his 

own separate headquarters and staff.

18. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Office of the Commander in Chief, Briefing Summary, 

SUBJECT: O & I, dated 0900 HRS 03 JAN 95, signed by Major Mark D. Needham A/SGS. O & I stands for Operations 

and Intelligence Briefings. These were periodic general update briefings held for the CINC and attended by senior 

representatives of the general and special staff.

19. Ibid. The document does not indicate these as strict quotations. However, MAJ Needham is obviously 

trying to capture the CINC’s admonitions. I have reflected them as quotations in the text as mandates, particularly 

the Commander in Chief’s, to set them apart from more general paraphrases.

20. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, MEMORANDUM FOR Commanding General [Seventh 

ATC], SUBJECT: Briefings to CINC USAREUR, dated 26 January 1995, signed by Alan D. Westfield, MAJ GS, 

Executive Officer. The Crouch files contain four separate memoranda of General Crouch’s visit. They were 

probably drafted to record sessions where the new Commander in Chief could be expected to issue guidance. For 

Mrs. Crouch’s role, see same collection, MEMORANDUM FOR Commanding General [Seventh ATC] SUBJECT: 

Summary of Mrs. Crouch’s Visit, dated 27 January 1995, signed by Alan D. Westfield, MAJ GS, Executive Officer.
41

21. An outsider might not appreciate that the process described is a process of elimination, in which only 

mission essential tasks are retained as training objectives. This is what it means to do less better: to focus on the 

essential, and master that. In this case, General Crouch, as CinC USAREUR, is deriving his Mission Essential Tasks 

from his understanding of his restated mission and his superior’s published critical tasks.

22. Expression “Going to the zinc mines” provided by Major General (UK) K. J. Drewienkiewicz, Chief of Staff 

at LANDCENT.

23. Providing military aid to foreign governments, even allies, is an activity wrapped in a complex network of 

legal restrictions. General Crouch would have become very familiar with these in his Korean assignment.

24. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, MEMORANDUM FOR Commanding General, 7th Army 

Training Command, SUBJECT: Mission/METL Briefings to CINC USAREUR, dated 27 January 1995, signed by 

Alan D. Westfield, MAJ GS, Executive Officer.

25. ATLANTIC RESOLVE is documented in great detail in a series of notebooks on file at HQ USAREUR, 

History Office.

26. Meigs had the experience of executing the first ATLANTIC RESOLVE. He was determined the second 

would not be so painful. He laid out his plan as part of a general command briefing he had prepared for General 

Crouch in April 1995. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Perspectives: U.S. Army Europe, 

Slides, “Atlantic Resolve ‘96’” (3 slides). Briefing is accompanied by a transmittal message signed by General 

Meigs.

27. Briefing books for the quarterly SOTP sessions are present in the USAREUR History Office.

28. All these policy letters are on file at the USAREUR History Office. They will be referred to hereafter 

according to their number and indicate their originating office by symbol. Most were issued on 10 and 15 April 

1995.

29. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAEO), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 17, Preventing Discrimination and Sexual Harassment, 21 March 1995.

30. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAEE), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 19, Affirmative Employment and Equal Opportunity, 10 April 1995.

31. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGC-O), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 7, Aircrew Selection and Training Management, 10 April 1995.

32. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA-SA), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 9, Military Vehicle Safety and Dispatch Procedures, 10 April 1995.

33. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA-S), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 26, Safety, 10 April 1995.

34. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAIG), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 27, Command Inspection Program, 24 July 1995.

35. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGC-O), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 1, Command Training Guidance, 10 April 1995.

36. Which, coincidentally, is required by 10 US Code, Sec. 3062 (b), which states: “It [the Army] shall be 

organized, trained and equipped primarily for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations on land.”

37. USAREUR Command Policy Letter 1, Command Training Guidance, 10 April 1995, 2.
42

38. Comment of Mr. Paul Quintal, Deputy Director, International Affairs Division ODSOPS, to author. Mr. 

Quintal had and has responsibility for oversight of the various international programs.

39. USAREUR Command Policy Letter 1, Command Training Guidance, 10 April 1995, 2.

40. Ibid.

41. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGC), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 2, Sergeants Time, 10 April 1995.

42. USAREUR Policy Letters 2, Sergeants Time; 3, Senior Officer Training Program; 14, Company Commander 

and First Sergeant Course; 21 Officer Professional Development and Utilization; 25 NCO Transition Program.

43. USAREUR Command Policy Letter 1, Command Training Guidance, 10 April 1995, 4 and 5.

44. Lieutenant Colonel Peter S. Corpac, OPERATION JOINT ENDEAVOR; An Artillery Battalion Commander’s 

Experiences in Bosnia, USAWC Personal Experience Monogram [sic], US Army War College [nd],12.

45. USAREUR Command Policy Letter 1, Command Training Guidance, 10 April 1995, 6.

46. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA-M), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 10, Soldier Time, 10 April 1995.

47. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGC), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 4, Commanders Training Briefings, 10 April 1995.

48. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGC), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 5, Unit Cohesion, 10 April 1995.

49. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA-GW), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 8, Physical Fitness Programs, 10 April 1995.

50. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAFA-GR), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 11, Single Soldier Quality of Life, 25 May 1995. This is one of the more detailed prescriptive 

documents.

51. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA-GY), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 12, Army Family Team Building Program (Family Member Track), 10 April 1995.

52. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 13, Sponsorship, 10 April 1995. Sponsorship is particularly important when new personnel 

and their families are coming to an overseas assignment.

53. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief (AEAGA-M), MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: USAREUR 

Command Policy Letter 20, Community Inprocessing and Inprocessing Training Centers. This memorandum lays 

out the indoctrination program for soldiers newly assigned to USAREUR.

54. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Perspectives: U.S. Army Europe, Script, “OLD BILL” 

slide (31c). Old Bill is a cartoon of an old horse cavalryman used by the Armor Center as a logo. The culmination 

of the Perspectives briefing was a graphic of Old Bill on a bluff superscribed with the unit patches of USAREUR, 

overlooking Europe, thinking of his family back at the Fort, with PX and Hospital. The words on the slide read: 

Power Projection, Trained and Ready, Living Well, Stability. These were the values General Crouch’s staff believed he 

wished to convey to external audiences.

55. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Perspectives: U.S. Army Europe.

56. Ibid., Slide “USAREUR’s Structure Today.”
43

57. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Perspectives: U.S. Army Europe, Slide, “NATO 

Commitments.”

58. Ibid., Slide, “Current Deployments.”

59. Ibid. Slide, “Battalions, HQs & Support.” Eventually Mechanized Battalions were given some relief from 

the ABLE SENTRY mission when other types of units were assigned this task. There was, of course, a training cost 

attendant to taking an armored battalion, putting them in HMMWVs, and using them to patrol the border.

60. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Today’s USAREUR. Briefing is dated 5/22/95 and 

labeled AUSA in lower right-hand corner. The briefing is organized around the Venn diagram of Stable Force, 

Living Well, Trained and Ready. Quality of Life is addressed under “Living Well.”

61. See HQ USAREUR, History Office, Interview Files, End-of-Tour Interview, Mr. John R. Kohler, SES, Deputy 

Chief of Staff, Resource Management, conducted by Stephen P. Gehring, USAREUR History Office, at Campbell 

Barracks, Heidelberg, Germany, Friday, 8 October 1999.

62. Briefing slide, “Basing Criteria: Critical Measures of Effectiveness,” provided to author by Colonel (Retired) 

William Chesarek.

63. Ibid.

64. This all holds true so long as excess space existed on existing USAREUR Kasernes. Eventually, that would 

run out. Then, while additional consolidation would still save money in the long run, it required an investment up 

front to build additional facilities at the desired consolidation site, say Grafenwöhr. General Meigs would wrestle 

with this difference in the “footprint” reduction process.

65. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO Handbook (Brussels, Belgium: NATO Office of Information and 

Press, October 1995), 50-58. Current edition of the NATO Handbook can be found on line at http://www.nato.int/docu/

handbook/1998/index.htm. 

66. Author’s discussion with LTG (ret) Richard Keller. Keller was Chief of Staff EUCOM during much of 

General Joulwan’s tenure. USSOUTHCOM has traditionally worked closely with individual ambassadors to 

balance regional military activity with Department of State priorities for individual states. Joulwan had worked in 

this pattern as CinC South before coming to EUCOM.

67. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, International Operations Division, Organized to 

Achieve CINC USAREUR’S #2 METL....REGIONAL STABILITY, Slide, “Military Liaison Teams.” According to an 

accompanying cover sheet, the briefing was conducted for LTG Richard Keller, USEUCOM Chief of Staff, on 29 

August 1995 in Heidelberg.

68. Ibid., Slide “State Partnership Program.”

69. Both LTG Keller and Mr. Quintal pointed to this experience in discussion with the author.

70. It is notable that when Secretary of Defense Perry came to Europe in July 1996 for briefings on JOINT 

ENDEAVOR, one of the briefings he asked for was the status of Partnership for Peace activities. HQ USAREUR, 

History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing What You Asked For: PFP Update FY 96-97 & Albania Training Center. Albania 

training center refers to US-sponsored construction of a training center in Albania related to PfP activities.

71. HQ USAREUR, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, International Operations Division, Briefing, Organized 

to Achieve CINC USAREUR’S #2 METL . . . REGIONAL STABILITY, Slide “USAREUR STAFF REALIGNMENT.”

72. David A. Lange, “The Role of the Political Advisor in Peacekeeping Operations,” Parameters (Spring 1999), 

92-109. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Interview Files, Oral History Interview, David A. Lange, USAREUR Political 

Advisor, 8 May 1998, by Mr. Stephen Gehring. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Interview Files, Exit Interview with 
44

Mr. David Lange, USAREUR Political Advisor (POLAD), 10 June 1998, by Dr. Bruce D. Saunders.

73. Quintal produced a detailed Partnership for Peace Standing Operating Procedure that guides the executing staff 

through every aspect of the process. In addition, his staff provides a staff officer to guide the executing headquarters 

over the pitfalls that are likely to occur in any PfP exercise. The SOP is a model of clarity and comprehensiveness 

and, not surprisingly, built on the 8-Step model. A copy of the February 1997 version of the SOP is in possession 

of the USAREUR History Office.

74. HQ USAREUR, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, International Operations Division, Briefing, PFP 

BUDGET FOR FY 97. Briefing provided the author by Mr. Paul Quintal.
45

CHAPTER 3

THE USAREUR ROAD TO BOSNIA

The possibility of US action in Bosnia had hung on the horizon since the 1992 onset of a 

fratricidal civil war over the carcass of the former Yugoslavia. By 1995, US Navy and Air Force 

elements were engaged in enforcing (selectively1) UN embargoes on the arms trade (SHARP 

GUARD) and air operations (DENY FLIGHT) in Bosnia, both under the command of NATO’s 

Commander in Chief, South (CINCSOUTH), US Admiral Leighton Smith.2 As the war went 

on, EUCOM formed Joint Task Force (JTF) Provide Promise to direct US activities supporting 

the UN forces engaged in the Balkans. Army forces provided intelligence to various civil and 

military staffs. The Army supported the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) with a hospital and 

support element located in Croatia and provided a mechanized infantry battalion task force, 

Able Sentry, to work with the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) in Macedonia.3 

Since the start of the war, USAREUR and other European headquarters had carried out a 

series of formal and informal planning projects focused on possible intervention missions in 

the Balkans. NATO and national planners tried almost continuously to keep pace with political 

developments, often without much political guidance, as various peace projects were broached 

by parties external to the conflict, only to fail to win acceptance by the warring factions.4 Because 

of the absence of political guidance and restrictions on initiating formal NATO planning before 

achieving consensus on the North Atlantic Council (NAC), this effort was sometimes not well 

coordinated. Indeed, on some alliance staffs, it often went on more or less covertly within ad 

hoc cells of favorably disposed national groupings. Even as the planning process became more 

focused and formal, it remained parallel with proximity to mission execution as a principal 

variable influencing the attention paid to the problem. Additionally, at least in the US forces, 

planning was sometimes hampered by compartmentalization designed apparently to keep 

exposure of military preparations from skewing the domestic political debate. So, while leaders 

seem to have stayed more or less synchronized, their staffs, who did the detailed planning, 

sometimes were in the dark. Add to this the limited number of planners in most headquarters, 

particular structural weaknesses in key movement control staffs, and the frictions resulting from 

the rush to execution in the end, and many of the deployment problems that followed become 

understandable.

The plans were drawn up in an international political environment in which the United 

States stood aloof from the current efforts of its European allies while criticizing them from the 

sidelines.5 European and Canadian forces conducted peace operations in the Balkans under UN 

political direction. In the United States, the impotence of UNPROFOR, along with the concurrent 

experience in Somalia (1993-94), largely discredited the United Nations as an authority capable 

of directing military operations. Moreover, the travails of UNPROFOR and the US willingness to 

urge aggressive action, along with a corresponding unwillingness to put troops on the ground, 

did nothing to build mutual confidence between American and European soldiers.6 This 

situation began to change with the more assertive conduct of General Rupert Smith, the British 

UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, once the UN dual key control over NATO air support was 

removed following the fall of Srebrenica.7 Smith, a taciturn “Para,” had commanded the British 

armored division in the Gulf War. There, he had won great respect from his US peers as an 

aggressive fighter. In Sarajevo, he was still aggressive but no less handicapped by the general 

structural weaknesses of the UNPROFOR organization.8

The US domestic political environment made sustained intervention in Bosnian affairs by 

the United States seem highly unlikely. In 1994, the President’s party had lost the Congress, and 
46

relations between the legislative and executive branches were poisonous. When intervention 

did come, it occurred in the midst of a bruising political struggle over the budget, during which 

the President closed the government by vetoing the Congressional Budget Act.9 To make 

intervention politically acceptable, US leaders emphasized its limited and temporary nature. 

Congressional critics were loud in their opposition and ambiguous in their voting. The Senate 

voted 69 to 30 to “acquiesce to the deployment,” and 52 to 47 opposing the decision. The House 

voted 287 to 141 to oppose the policy but to support the troops. The House declined to vote 

simply to support the troops.10 All these background conditions affected the actions of the Army 

service component commander in supporting the CINCEUR’s execution of Presidential orders 

to provide US Army forces to NATO to enforce the General Framework Agreement for Peace 

initialed at Dayton in November 1995.

Events in Bosnia came to a climax in 1995 for the following reasons: 

• The balance of power between the contending parties changed decisively.11 

• Things in Bosnia got bad enough such that Europeans were ready to accept US 

leadership when offered, indeed they sought it out.12 

• To avoid the abysmal choice between active intervention on the ground in an ongoing 

civil war, even to rescue allies and the almost equally bad political consequences of 

not bailing out the European governments, should they ask, the President undertook 

an intense effort to find a third way--an acceptable formula for a settlement in BosniaHerzegovina.13 

By 1995, the Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), had reached 

their strategic culmination point. Their Croat and Muslim enemies were growing stronger as 

the Serbs, increasingly isolated, could only grow weaker. (This view is far clearer in retrospect 

than it was at the time. Moreover, weaker or not, the Bosnian Serbs demonstrated in the summer 

of 1995 that they were still capable of great mischief.) Things started going badly for the Serbs 

and promised only to get worse. In March the Bosniacs broke the winter cease-fire brokered 

by former President Jimmy Carter in late December 1994 with attacks out of Tuzla, Travnik, 

and Gorazde. In May, the Croatian Army freed Western Slavonia. The Serbs responded with 

increased shelling of Sarajevo. When NATO bombed targets near the Bosnian Serb capital at 

Pale in response to this shelling, the Serbs seized 350 UNPROFOR soldiers as hostages. NATO 

was already planning to remove its peacekeepers. By then, this could be done only by placing 

a new and capable military force in the middle of the Bosnian war to extract the forces already 

there. This would likely be done in the face of resistance from all three factions. According to 

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, it was that possibility, the likelihood of having to commit US 

troops to combat in the Balkans if the United States could not find a formula for peace, that 

spurred the President to undertake an intense effort to bring the contending and interested 

parties to the table at Dayton.14 That any extraction would be an explicit confession of a massive 

Western geopolitical failure only made it less desirable. 

The diplomatic offensive took place as events in Bosnia spiraled downward. Planning for 

extraction increased in intensity at NATO and in EUCOM. In late May, the President publicly 

acknowledged an obligation to support the European allies in any extraction, only to be forced 

to back down from that position within the week.15 In June, US Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady 

was rescued after he was shot down over Bosnia. The British and the French reinforced their 

UN contribution to Bosnia with a robust reaction force that, nonetheless, took time to arrive in 

part due to Croatian and Bosniac intransigence.16 It was not entirely clear if the reaction force 
47

was to increase overall staying power or to pre-position forces to facilitate withdrawal. It could 

be made the basis for either.

In July, the Serbs overreacted to Bosniac and Croat offensives and, possibly, the new push for 

peace by overrunning the Srebrenica safe area and massacring the male Bosniac civilians who fell 

into their hands.17 This action, which humiliated the Dutch UNPROFOR battalion in Srebrenica, 

shocked the Western governments, particularly French President Jacques Chirac.18 Evacuation 

of UN forces from Bosnia appeared imminent. Then, in early August, the Croats struck with a 

major offensive to clear the Croatian Krajina and drive into western Bosnia, throwing the Serbs 

from the territory they had captured to maintain a corridor between the Serb Krajina and the 

Serb homeland. A Danish peacekeeper was killed in the Croat recovery of the Krajina.19

On 28 August, the Serbs sent a mortar round into the Sarajevo market. It was neither the 

first time nor the bloodiest such attack, but it provided an excuse for NATO to hit back hard 

(Operation DELIBERATE FORCE) in conjunction with General Rupert Smith’s operations inside 

Bosnia. NATO airpower added a significant new complication as the Serbs sought to stabilize 

their lines against the Croatian onslaught and separate Bosniac attacks. On the other hand, the 

United States artfully avoided letting matters proceed to the point of giving Bosnian Federation 

forces a decisive advantage by calling off their air attacks before the Serbs had been irreparably 

damaged.20 The warring parties and their sponsors agreed to a preliminary peace conference 

in Geneva, Switzerland, in early September. On 14 September, a bombing halt was declared. 

A cease-fire was signed on 5 October. In November, the Dayton Peace Talks produced the 

General Framework Agreement for Peace with its requirement for a substantial NATO-led force 

to guarantee the military provisions of the Dayton agreements against misbehavior by any of 

the parties.

It is an irony of the NATO Balkan endeavors that such out-of-area military actions are not 

provided for by the North Atlantic Treaty.21 Subsequent ministerial declarations pave the way 

for such projects, but revision of the treaty, which requires legislative confirmation in the United 

States and some other member nations, has not been attempted. The choice of NATO to direct 

any military effort had both political and practical dimensions. Politically, the United States was 

not likely to provide forces for service under the United Nations, given the experience of Somalia 

and the UN’s immediate record with UNPROFOR in Bosnia. (Still, some NATO allies insisted 

on at least the legal legitimacy of a Security Council Resolution before undertaking action there. 

Four years later they would have no such scruples before bombing the FRY.) Practically, NATO 

integrated the United States with Europe as no other organization, and the alliance brought to 

the direction of military operations a structure and history of almost a half-century’s experience 

of allied cooperation. So NATO it would be. Any US forces provided would fall under NATO 

operational authority. The exact nature of alliance control, however, was going to be influenced 

by the residue of the Clinton Administration’s Somalia debacle, as expressed in Presidential 

Decision Directive (PDD)-25, “The Clinton Administration’s Policy on Reforming Multilateral 

Peace Operations.”22

PDD-25 was the product of an interagency review following the October 1993 Mogadishu 

shootout in which 18 US Rangers were killed and US participation in the UN Somalia adventure 

was brought to a quick end. Simply put, PDD-25 set strict limits on the extent to which US 

military forces could be placed under direction of other nationals acting under cover of the United 

Nations. It established a governing principle for interagency leadership of peace operations that 

would influence the conduct of Bosnian affairs at the outset, giving the Department of Defense 

interagency leadership of the peace operation. 

PDD-25, or at least the unclassified white paper issued to explain it in May 1994, is 

ambiguous.23 Although it addresses multilateral peace operations in general, it can also be read 

as limiting its strictures on the military chain of command during UN peace operations, leaving 
48

greater flexibility to operations conducted by regional alliances like NATO whose operations 

are explicitly favored. NATO, of course, has treaty-based agreements on command policies that 

predate Somalia.24 That said, the principles on which the 1994 Presidential policy was based 

are stated in general terms and are not specific to UN operations. Moreover, the document is 

the obvious source for subsequent joint and service doctrine (JCS Publication 3-16, 5 April 2000, 

and FM 100-8, 24 November 1997). Its terms were clearly respected in early Balkan operations, 

notwithstanding that these operations were conducted under cover of NATO. The fact is that 

PDD-25 was issued to preempt congressional attempts to embed many of its provisions in 

statute. It may be read, then, as a statement at least of evolving doctrine on such matters or as 

an indication of what was politically acceptable at that time, whether or not it had authoritative 

standing vis-à-vis JOINT ENDEAVOR. 

Four provisions of PDD-25 set the limits of US military participation in international 

operations under foreign command:

V. Command and Control of U.S. Forces

A. Our Policy: The President retains and will never relinquish Command authority over 

U.S. forces. [Emphasis added.] On a case by case basis, the President will consider 

placing appropriate U.S. forces under the operational control of a competent UN 

commander for specific UN operations authorized by the Security Council.

B. Definition of Command: No President has ever relinquished command over 

U.S. forces. Command constitutes the authority to issue orders covering every aspect of 

military operations and administration. The sole source of legitimacy for U.S. commanders 

originates from the U.S. Constitution, federal law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice 

and flows from the President to the lowest U.S. commander in the field. The chain of 

command from the President to the lowest U.S. commander in the field remains inviolate. 

[Emphasis added.]

C. [Part omitted.] Operational control is a subset of command. It is given for a specific time 

frame or mission and includes the authority to assign tasks to U.S. forces already deployed 

by the President, and assign tasks to U.S. units led by U.S. officers. [Emphasis added.] 

Within the limits of operational control, a foreign UN commander cannot: change 

the mission or deploy U.S. forces outside the area of responsibility agreed to by 

the President, separate units, divide their supplies, administer discipline, promote 

anyone, or change their internal organization.

D. Fundamental Elements of U.S. Command Always Apply: [Emphasis added.] If it is to our 

advantage to place U.S. forces under the operational control of a UN commander, 

the fundamental elements of U.S. command still apply. U.S. commanders will 

maintain the capability to report separately to higher U.S. military authorities, as 

well as the UN commander. Commanders of U.S. military units participating in 

UN operations will refer to higher U.S. authorities orders that are illegal under 

U.S. or international law, or are outside the mandate of the mission to which the 

U.S. agreed with the UN, if they are unable to resolve the matter with the UN 

commander. The U.S. reserves the right to terminate participation at any time 

and to take whatever actions it deems necessary to protect U.S. forces if they are 

endangered.25
49

Another provision of PDD-25 assigned to the DOD “lead responsibility for the oversight and 

management of those Chapter VI [UN Charter] operations in which there are U.S. combat units 

and for all peace enforcement (Chapter VII) peace operations.”26 It is arguable that the limits 

of PDD-25 were mitigated by participation under the flag of NATO, which had preexisting 

agreements on “delegation of operational direction,” and, of course, the President is not bound 

by his own decision directives if he wishes to change them.27 What is clear is that in this NATO 

operation, the principles expressed in PDD-25 were respected as were its limits on delegation of 

authority outside the US chain of command, NATO notwithstanding. 

Seen from the leading edge rather than with benefit of hindsight, 1995 was a year in which 

Bosnia missions changed profoundly. At the beginning of the year, it appeared that any US 

intervention would be to assist in disengaging and evacuating UNPROFOR forces. By the 

end of the year, diplomatic efforts had been successful, and instead of a fleeting insertion to 

remove threatened peacekeepers, US forces joined a sustained NATO effort to enforce a peace 

agreement, which was quite another task with very different requirements. 

The extraction mission loomed large as the year began. Allied Forces Southern Europe 

(AFSOUTH) had begun to plan for such an assignment in July 1994. The AFSOUTH concept 

called for employing heavy forces, including the US 1st Armored Division under the operational 

command of the British ACE (Allied Command Europe) Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), 

assuming that the United States would agree to participate at the moment of execution. The 

scheme called for entry from the Adriatic into the territory of the Bosnian Federation. In 

February 1995, EUCOM requested an analysis from USAREUR of the forces required to support 

the AFSOUTH plan. The USAREUR estimate was 24,000 troops. EUCOM imposed a force 

cap of 13,500. USAREUR provided a force structure that met this limit and a corresponding 

risk assessment. The planning cap was raised to 14,900, and that number was passed to the 1st 

Armored Division, the anticipated executing headquarters.28

In May, with the deteriorating situation in Bosnia, USAREUR began planning the extraction 

in earnest. The threat to the UN safe areas introduced a new twist. Because the threat was 

immediate, quick response (emergency extraction) options using light airmobile forces had to be 

considered. This would be a highly risky enterprise, simply because of the extended ranges that 

self-deployment and execution involved, the requirement for long-distance night operations, 

and the lack of airmobile and even tactical training on the part of the forces who were to be 

extracted. Moreover, these risks were in addition to the possibility of any reaction from the 

Bosnian factions.29 TF Lion, from USAREUR’s Italy-based SETAF, commanded by Major 

General Jack Nix, became the force of choice.30 From May through September, some variant 

of the light option appeared the most likely to be exercised, although NATO had significant 

problems finding mechanisms for agreeing on the extraction options and, more particularly, the 

chain of command to be used if AFSOUTH Plan 40104 was to be approved.31 

On another track, in June General Joulwan as CINCEUR instructed USAREUR to develop a 

generic mission, concept, and structure for a US heavy division deployment to Bosnia to jump 

start NATO planning for peace implementation.32 This introduced a third (but by no means 

most urgent) option to the NATO planning suite. USAREUR responded to General Joulwan’s 

requirements by starting work on the implications that such an effort promised for the Army 

component and its subordinate units. Planning for peace implementation went on at several 

levels throughout the summer, aside from the continuation of the contingency planning that 

was almost constant in the 1st Armored Division throughout the crisis.

In August 1995, as the Croat counteroffensive and the initiative toward a US peace initiative 

began to build momentum, emphasis at USAREUR was balanced between various extraction 

options and anticipation of a peace implementation mission based on a US sector in a NATO 

occupation. USAREUR planners worked out several estimates of required US force size based 
50

on an analysis of required tasks for force separation and variable depths of proposed zones of 

separation (ZOSs). US experience in Korea with its demilitarized zone served as something of a 

conceptual model upon which analysis could be based.33

On 28 August, a mortar round went off in Sarajevo’s Markale, and on the 30th the NATO air 

offensive began. That same day, by invitation of the Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer, 

General Crouch (then in the United States to attend a conference at Fort Knox, Kentucky) 

briefed the JCS on options under consideration at EUCOM for possible peace implementation 

missions in Bosnia. Throughout the preparation and execution of the Bosnia deployment, 

General Crouch made sure his superiors, particularly those in Washington, clearly understood 

the basis of his actions and had an accurate view of what was going on. His initiatives group 

prepared several briefings that he carried back to Washington to engage uniformed and civilian 

policymakers. He also used the initiatives group to prepare graphics of what might be called 

the physics of the problem to shape pending decisions so decisionmakers were fully aware of 

what their decisions would entail. Clearly standing out is the extent to which the USAREUR 

commander was proactive in what was clearly a collaborative effort involving him and various 

levels of government within and without normal departmental channels.

The August briefing was aimed to justify to the Joint Chiefs the magnitude of the USAREUR 

estimate of the force requirement to separate the warring factions, to explain and gain credibility 

for the methodology used to arrive at the figure, and to educate the Navy and Air Force Chiefs 

about how such a task would have to be done. When Crouch left Washington next day, he left 

his Deputy DCSOPS, Colonel Douglas Walters, behind to assist the US Air Force J3, Lieutenant 

General Hal Estes, with sector analysis for the entire peace implementation mission in 

preparation for the JCS briefing to the President. Eventually, General Joulwan found out what 

Walters was doing and ordered him back to Europe.34 The fact that the effort was collaborative 

did not, of course, mean that the Army component could not find itself out in front of the theater 

commander even with the best of intentions.

In June, USAREUR directed that V Corps undertake campaign planning for the force provider 

portion of a peace enforcement operation to support the ARRC. This initiated the particular 

process that would produce USAREUR Campaign Plan 40105, under which the deployment of 

TF Eagle for JOINT ENDEAVOR was conducted. It is notable that, at that time, formal NATO 

planning for a peace enforcement mission, which required a NAC (political) authorization, 

had not yet officially begun. By 6 September, V Corps staff members had completed a mission 

analysis, which they briefed at Grafenwöhr to the V Corps commander, Lieutenant General 

John Abrams, who was involved just then in a SETAF rehearsal exercise. The briefing was not 

entirely to his satisfaction, but it marked the beginning of a process that would be continuous 

through December.35 

Additionally, during that same summer of 1995, USAREUR was to develop plans for a US 

Train-and-Equip Program designed to strengthen the Federation Armed Forces as part of any 

peace settlement.36 Planning for the Train-and-Equip Mission was passed to V Corps. The corps 

assigned responsibility to the 3d Infantry Division. The task was subsequently separated from 

the US military and contracted out by the Department of State to Military Professional Resources 

Incorporated (MPRI), a defense contracting firm employing retired Army Chief of Staff General 

Carl Vuono and retired CINCUSAREUR General Crosbie Saint. Earlier, MPRI had provided 

training to the Croat Army before its summer offensive. It is, of course, important to observe 

that all this planning, and the corresponding dialogue among the headquarters of 1st Armored 

Division, 3d Infantry Division, V Corps, SETAF, USAREUR, EUCOM, and JCS, was going on 

long before the talks at Dayton or even agreement to conduct the talks at Dayton.

In June 1995, General Crouch had General Abrams conduct an intensive training and 

mission rehearsal exercise (Exercise MOUNTAIN SHIELD) for TF Lion at the Grafenwöhr and 
51

Hohenfels training areas.37 Using the V Corps commander was consistent with Crouch’s view 

on external evaluation. He held that leadership training was a major part of unit preparation, 

and unit training began with the commander. Leaders could not train themselves. They 

required external evaluation and coaching as much as their units. In this case, General Abrams 

functioned as Crouch’s executive agent for forming and training TF Lion, providing unity of 

command over the Seventh ATC, SETAF (not part of V Corps), the two aviation units (11th 

Aviation Regiment and 12th Aviation Brigade) drawn from V Corps to form the aerial core of 

TF Lion, and other USAREUR units tasked to support the training effort.38 

Abrams was also charged with certifying the task force’s readiness to perform the extraction 

mission.39 The organizational solution marked the beginning of a general process of informal, 

experience-based adaptation within the USAREUR and V Corps headquarters to achieve 

Bosnia-related operational ends. The MOUNTAIN SHIELD exercise was conducted as the 

Serbs attacked Srebrenica. Simultaneously, USAREUR planners formed a crisis action planning 

cell to explore providing US aviation support to French UNPROFOR forces to extract British 

forces from Gorazde and a concept plan for extracting other British troops from Bihac.40 Neither 

plan was executed. 

A principal problem confronting a service component commander is deciding when to 

commit funds in preparation for a possible mission. Funding almost always comes, if it comes 

at all, after contingencies since Congress responds to events rather than anticipating them. 

Moreover, funding for contingencies, which are by nature unprogrammed, may be provided by 

allocating new (contingency) funds or by transferring (reprogrammed) monies found elsewhere 

in the DOD budget. The latter is often the solution imposed by Congress to pay for unpopular 

missions assigned by the executive branch without congressional support. Because of this, 

a component commander risks his own annual budget and a good bit of his department’s if 

he underwrites preparation for a mission that may not happen. At the same time, he risks 

additional organizational hardship, his troops’ welfare, and possibly failure in the mission if he 

waits too long to invest in preparations that require long lead times before execution. A fine 

judgment of strategic and political probabilities is required, as well as sources of information 

beyond those on which military men normally rely. Because funding is departmental, the service 

component commander must weigh the risk of investment against the probability of action. To 

answer doubters, General Crouch’s initiatives group built a chronology based principally on 

interactions with DOD to demonstrate that his actions were known by the Secretary of Defense 

and consistent with the public line.41

On 7 September, TF Lion was brought back to Germany for another MOUNTAIN SHIELD 

rehearsal exercise to maintain proficiency should the UNPROFOR withdrawal option be called 

for. On the 9th, the Contact Group’s Preliminary Peace Conference was convened in Geneva, 

Switzerland, lasting until 13 September.42 A NATO bombing halt followed on the 14th, and 

on the 27th AFSOUTH issued revised (NATO subordinate command) guidance for a peace 

implementation force. On 29 September, the North Atlantic Council finally compromised on the 

composition of the chain of command by inserting the SACEUR for any NATO intervention. In 

return, as a gesture to concerns about US domination of the mission, an agreement was reached 

to include a NATO POLAD at the headquarters of the IFOR.43 The POLAD would be a European. 

On 30 September, the SACEUR, General Joulwan, issued his initial (NATO) strategic guidance 

for the IFOR mission, following that of AFSOUTH. This is not to suggest, of course, that the two 

were incompatible or that the SACEUR had been uninformed of what the AFCOUTH strategic 

guidance would contain. That same day, General Crouch decided that the likelihood of the 

IFOR mission was sufficiently strong that he would begin to expend resources to prepare for it.44

By the end of fiscal year 1996 (1 October 1996), USAREUR expended $89 million just to prepare 

TF Eagle I and its much smaller replacement for Bosnia duty.45
52

As the amount indicates, the decision to expend such money was not trivial. The time of year 

and diplomatic schedule meant that any NATO IFOR mission would be executed during a Balkan 

winter. Significant investment would have to be made in winter clothing and organizational 

equipment. For winter clothing alone, General Crouch committed $7 million before receiving 

the JCS execution order authorizing expenditure, and certainly well before Congress had 

decided how to pay for the unpopular mission.46 Intensive mission-specific training would 

have to be mounted for the 1st Armored Division, leading to a division-sized mission rehearsal. 

The second V Corps division, the 3d Infantry now commanded by Major General Montgomery 

Meigs, would be used, first, as a resource to fill out and supplement the deploying force and, 

second, to support the training process. This training, to be conducted within the principles of 

the USAREUR 8-step training process, would require the total commitment of USAREUR forces. 

General Abrams would again act as impresario. Simultaneously, USAREUR, V Corps, the 21st 

TAACOM, and TF Eagle would conduct their final execution planning for Operation JOINT 

ENDEAVOR, also at Seventh ATC. At the same time, USAREUR was providing advice through 

EUCOM to the Joint Staff on the military contents of the proposed peace plan. The MOUNTAIN 

EAGLE mission rehearsal exercise began as the contending parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina 

agreed to a cease-fire.47 The cease-fire lasted until 20 November. It was then replaced by the 

General Framework Agreement for Peace agreed to at Dayton.

The CINCUSAREUR’s decision to expend major funding preparing for the Bosnia mission still 

represented a certain risk, and it was one his service department was bound to find troubling, at 

least in the short term. DA was particularly sensitive to financial risk that autumn as the Clinton 

Administration and Congress continued to fight over the budget. As discussed in the previous 

chapter, preparation for the Bosnia mission came just as the Army Chief of Staff was trying to 

find cost savings throughout the department to avoid reducing end strength as a means to create 

funding for modernization. Thus, in the middle of escalating Bosnia preparations, General 

Crouch had to have his principal leaders find significant long-range savings of a magnitude that 

could be met only by combining major reductions in base support operations, logistics command 

reengineering, reductions in training tempo, and a massive reduction in the remaining Europe 

base structure and civilian workforce.48 The Army in Europe would expend large sums of 

money and conduct a major contingency operation while simultaneously undergoing a major 

restructuring of the surviving sustaining base in the central region. 

It is not surprising that some in DA believed the CINCUSAREUR was leaning a bit far 

forward in expending resources for a winter deployment to Bosnia before there was any peace 

agreement or JCS execution order. Certainly, many in USAREUR and EUCOM, used to seeing 

the Bosnia peace planning flame alternately wax and wane, doubted the projected deployment 

would take place that winter.49 But the USAREUR commander could not afford to wait on 

events. Detailed execution planning and mission training for the JOINT ENDEAVOR mission 

took place simultaneously at the Seventh ATC from September to November 1995, with General 

Crouch and USAREUR bearing the risk of major fiscal problems downrange, should the mission 

not materialize as expected.

Before training could commence, however, planning had to advance to the point where the 

leaders, in this case Generals Joulwan, Crouch, and Abrams, and Major General William Nash, 

the commander of the 1st Armored Division, had a basic notion of what they were going to do 

and how and a more or less accurate notion of how they would have to organize for the task. In 

particular they had to answer the questions of how the peace force would be structured; what 

would be the national chain of command and its parameters in this first out-of-area NATO land 

operation; and what supporting structure would have to be deployed to sustain the combat force 

operating over a thousand kilometers from its base in Central Europe. The mission response 

was conditioned by the fact that the force structure remaining in Europe after the post-Cold War 
53

drawdown was not what it appeared to be on paper, that is, a combat-ready corps. Nor was 

the US force to be dispatched to Bosnia as the 1st Armored Division recognizable as a standard 

US division, if such existed by the mid-1990s. Finally, whatever force was sent had to be put 

together under somewhat arbitrary force caps, set for political reasons presumably having to do 

with burden sharing and political acceptability as much as strategic design. The modification of 

the USAREUR organizational structure and the redesign of the 1st Armored Division reflect a 

triumph of what might be called modular thinking in an Army often accused of inability to work 

outside the standard divisional box.

The governing notion of the post-Cold War defense posture was that the Army was to 

become essentially a CONUS-based force capable of reinforcement forward to fill out nominal 

force structures remaining in Korea and Europe or assigned for planning to headquarters in 

the Middle East. The truncated corps left in Europe would have to be reinforced by various 

troop modules before it was actually a combat corps, as would its divisions. To take the 

field, the corps support command (COSCOM) required significant reinforcement from the 

Reserve Components, and that would involve delays occasioned by Presidential call-up, 

mobilization, and deployment.50 USAREUR itself was configured only as a planning, training, 

and housekeeping headquarters, retaining a theater support command capable of sustaining 

only the European force in place and a communications command structure adequate to 

support only limited theater contingency operations. There was no full-time operations center 

in USAREUR headquarters in 1995. A crisis action team was to be assembled from the various 

staff directorates when contingencies arose.

In the evolving mission in Bosnia, the United States was to contribute a framework division 

headquarters to serve essentially as a NATO subordinate command, Multinational DivisionNorth (MND-N), and a force of two tailored ground maneuver brigade combat teams, a 

division artillery, an engineer brigade, and an aviation brigade. 51 The US framework division 

headquarters would then accept some sort of directive authority over two NATO brigades (the 

Turkish brigade and the NORDPOL brigade of Norwegian, Danish, and Polish units) and a 

Russian brigade. The Russian brigade would come to Bosnia under terms of a special bilateral 

US-Russian agreement engineered by General Joulwan.52 All that took time to finalize. It was 

evident that the division headquarters would have to be structured to direct more than its 

normal complement of maneuver units, and there was yet another difficulty to be addressed.

Since the 1970s, the US Army fighting structure has been based on the corps. Divisions are 

fighting formations that draw their sustainment and specialized support from corps-level brigades 

and groups, most operating on an area basis to support committed divisions. Divisions are not 

structured to stand alone or to control the several supporting formations organic to the corps on 

which their operations depend. The 1st Armored Division would have to be restructured for the 

unique area control mission to which it was to be committed and would have to be reinforced 

by a number of technical brigades and groups that would otherwise have been in a supporting 

corps structure. These would be linked to higher echelon sustainment structures outside the 

Bosnia AOR. All this had to be done within a dictated national force cap, the details of which 

were subject to some floating redefinition.53 The additional support brigades included a corps 

engineer brigade (minus), a military intelligence brigade, a military police brigade, a signal 

brigade, a medical brigade, and an additional brigade-sized corps support group. In all, there 

were six corps support brigades to be incorporated into the divisional structure.54

Then there was the matter of maintaining as inviolate US national chain of command within 

a multinational (i.e., NATO) organization, required for all the reasons laid down in PDD-25, if 

not because of PDD-25. The choices for defining such a prarallel chain depended not only on 

what the logical answer would be based on the US Army structure, but also on the distorting 

effect close proximity of a large US headquarters could impose on what was supposed to be a 
54

NATO operation. There were several choices. CINCEUR could form a US joint task force (JTF) 

to combine all services under one head intermediate between EUCOM and committed forces 

downrange. He could assign this joint command to the EUCOM Navy component commander, 

Admiral Smith, who also served as NATO CINCSOUTH and was designated COMIFOR; to 

CINCUSAREUR, who would contribute the majority of the committed forces; to Crouch’s 

subordinate, Lieutenant General Abrams, Commander, V Corps; to Major General Nash, 

Commanding General TF Eagle, the senior troop commander in Bosnia; or to some other senior 

US officer, from some other source. EUCOM SOP provided for such a JTF, the commander for 

which was to be provided an operational staff or have his own augmented with other service 

officers. Alternatively, CINCEUR could retain joint command in his own hands at EUCOM and 

exercise his US command through his components by allocating responsibilities in accordance 

with his concept of the operation. Indeed, General Joulwan chose to do the latter.55

The key question involved who was to oversee the day-to-day conduct of the US 

commitment to a mission of enormous domestic political and international sensitivity. Clearly, 

General Joulwan, the CINCEUR, could not displace forward to Hungary or Sarajevo, and 

neither of his headquarters (in Stuttgart or Mons) was structured for close oversight. Admiral 

Smith would be in Bosnia (though it was not originally planned that way56), but Smith was a 

Navy officer unfamiliar with the technical requirements of ground operations. His chief of 

staff, Lieutenant General Bill Carter, was a respected US Army officer, but Smith’s ground 

component commander was a British lieutenant general who might have resented national 

second-guessing from the US NATO chief of staff. The division commander might have been 

entrusted with the mission directly, and, indeed, General Nash and General Joulwan talked 

frequently consequent to the special command arrangements in place for the Russian brigade.57 

However, given the sensitivity of the mission, it was unlikely that a major general and tactical 

commander would be senior enough to bear the full responsibility for US success or failure. The 

notion of simply deploying the V Corps headquarters forward, albeit out of sector, apparently 

raised concerns at the NATO headquarters that its operational command would be preempted 

by the existence of another corps headquarters to which the US division commander would 

have to be responsive. There was a real fear in the NATO headquarters that, with the United 

States in possession of the SACEUR and the COMIFOR, the implied diminution of the role of the 

ARRC would completely unbalance the US-European command structure. In the end, General 

Crouch made a creative decision to combine the USAREUR and corps headquarters in a sort 

of condominium. He then exercised US administrative control (ADCON) of US Army forces 

in Bosnia through an organization called Headquarters, USAREUR (Forward), commanded by 

Lieutenant General Abrams, the V Corps commander, acting as Deputy Commander in Chief 

(DCINC) of USAREUR (Forward). 

Abrams’ staff came mainly from the V Corps headquarters, with Brigadier General B. B. 

Bell, an assistant division commander from the nondeploying 3d Infantry Division, designated 

to be Abrams’ chief of staff. Bell had served in essentially the same role for Abrams during the 

various preparatory exercises at Seventh ATC during the summer and fall. Abrams retained 

command of nondeploying V Corps units in the Central Region and exercised it through a 

rump V Corps staff, the 3d Infantry Division Commander, and an ad hoc TF Victory, the latter 

commanded by Abrams’ deputy corps commander, Major General Walter Yates.58 General 

Crouch divided his time between the Central Region and Hungary/Bosnia. Because General 

Abrams’ USAREUR (Forward) headquarters was manned about 70 percent by V Corps officers, 

there was some confusion in identity. Those posted forward seem never to have understood 

entirely the notion that they were part of an extended and integrated USAREUR headquarters 

staff rather than a subordinate tactical command element. In the end, the distinction may have 

been meaningless.
55

There remained only the question of the boundaries of responsibility between the two 

parallel chains of command, US and NATO. Under Title 10, all US military forces in a theater 

are assigned or attached to the joint headquarters of a combatant CINC.59 Combatant command, 

which only a theater or specified commander may hold, is divided into operational control 

(OPCON) and administrative command (ADCON). The latter encompasses all aspects of 

command except operational control.60 Normally, for routine activities, both aspects of command 

are delegated to component commanders who then perform the various departmental and 

operational duties. In Europe, when the United States provides forces to NATO, the normal 

procedure is that OPCON (US) is taken from the service component commander back to the 

CINCEUR, who then assigns OPCON (NATO61) to the SACEUR (himself in his NATO role), 

who may then delegate some form of directive authority, consistent with that he holds, to a 

subordinate NATO commander, in this case COMIFOR. ADCON, for reasons of domestic law 

alone, is by necessity a national function. Discipline is maintained by national law, and there 

are many restrictions against sharing resources without congressional authority. In most cases, 

logistics and intelligence remain national functions.

In JOINT ENDEAVOR, CINCUSAREUR retained OPCON of TF Eagle through its 

movement into the NATO AOR. In practical terms, the decision was made to transfer authority 

(called transfer of authority or TOA) to NATO on crossing the Sava River into Bosnia. Thus, 

Generals Crouch and Abrams retained responsibility for the strategic movement of their forces 

into Hungary, for the operational movement to the Sava, and even for the style and timing of 

the tactical movement across the river. It was General Crouch who ordered entry into Bosnia 

through a deliberate river crossing, a choice that delayed introducing heavy combat forces but 

ensured their security if things went wrong. The choice of method was based on the facts that 

no one knew in advance what the local reaction would be to American forces (this in spite of 

the fact that Croat forces held both sides of the river at the crossing site) and to demonstrate 

unequivocally that the Americans had arrived ready for business if any chose to react in a 

hostile manner.62

CINCUSAREUR retained ADCON, or responsibility for the discipline, administration, 

sustainment, and training of the force, even after TOA to NATO. In addition, in December, 

General Crouch went to the CINCEUR with the notion that, because he (Crouch) was committing 

most of the US forces engaged, he was responsible for building the troop encampments in the 

AOR. And, most fundamentally, because only the Army had the necessary technical knowledge 

required to set appropriate standards governing security of ground troops, he should exercise 

US national responsibility for force protection policy over the US troops in Bosnia. General 

Joulwan agreed and made his CINCUSAREUR his executive agent for force protection, an 

authority General Crouch exercised through USAREUR (Forward).63

These two issues, the timing (i.e., locale) of transfer of authority (TOA) and control over force 

protection, proved to be real nettles to the NATO authorities, be they American or European. 

Timing of TOA was a problem because the approach finally taken, south from Hungary, 

through Croatia, into Bosnia, required passage between Zagreb and the contested Eastern 

Slavonia region. Croatia, of course, was a faction sponsor and an interested party at Dayton. 

Dayton had placed Eastern Slavonia under UN military administration until it could be cleared 

of Serb forces and returned to Croatia. IFOR was responsible, on order, for rescuing the small 

UN force. Moreover, President Tudjman was concerned that his ability to move rapidly from 

western to eastern Croatia could be interrupted by the north-south movement of US forces. 

Admiral Smith had to guarantee it would not.64 Integral to this was the issue of General Crouch’s 

insistence that TF Eagle troops conduct a tactical as opposed to an administrative movement 

into the AOR. General Petrosky, the USAREUR DCSOPS succeeding Meigs, went to Naples 

to argue the case with Admiral Smith. The Army position was that this was a fundamental 
56

command issue. Units should not be sent into harm’s way without the security that comes 

from each soldier being in his designated tactical disposition with his appropriate weapons. 

The soldiers, knowing the recent history of the area, would not understand leaders who sent 

them in otherwise, Petrosky argued, and Admiral Smith gave way.65The ARRC had asked for 

TOA on crossing into Croatia. They lost the argument until some time after the deployment 

was complete.66 TOA occurred, in accordance with NATO policy, when the units were deemed 

ready for operations in Bosnia.

The final contentious issue was the claim of authority by CINCUSAREUR over force 

protection of US forces under NATO OPCON in the NATO AOR. NATO officials complained 

that the stringent requirements set by General Crouch, specifically that no convoy in Bosnia 

be dispatched with less than four vehicles, effectively reduced the availability of committed 

forces and, therefore, conflicted with the conduct of operations that fell under their authority. 

Later, when Crouch continued to insist that US soldiers leave their base only in full battle 

gear, including protective mask, helmet, flack vest, and weapon, allies complained that the 

presentation of the US forces was inconsistent with the “soft” front they wished to present to 

the Bosnian people. EUCOM’s after-action report found fault with the decision, arguing that 

the assertion of authority under Title 10 was unprecedented.67 

Still, there were grounds for the argument about whether or not Title 10 was the proper 

warrant. In the view of General Crouch (and General Joulwan) and many others, the United 

States was the center of gravity of the NATO operation. The quickest way to end the peace 

enforcement mission could well have been the random killing of two or three American service 

members, generating political repercussions and a consequent US withdrawal like that from 

Somalia. The US force protection measures were designed to avoid such losses. The US Army 

intended not to fail.

Then, there was the psychological effect that US and, for that matter, NATO leaders were 

trying to achieve at the beginning, which was to send a clear message that something had 

changed in Bosnia.68 NATO, and particularly the Americans, had arrived and they were not 

UNPROFOR. They were going to make sure that all parties lived up to their undertakings, 

and they intended to meet any infraction, by any party, with overwhelming force. Disciplined 

martial appearance was combat power in this endeavor, and the hard disciplined approach was 

the unwritten Army doctrine in contrast particularly to the British, whose reference point, more 

often than not, was their long experience in Northern Ireland. This particular difference of 

tactical style would prove long-lasting, but on the question of force protection the US position 

as to national authority remained firm as, notably, did that of other NATO partners.69 As one 

US battalion commander reflected later, “One can negotiate effectively and well in kevlar.”70

Finally, it is arguable that insistence on rigorous standards of force protection is simply 

another aspect of each nation’s right to define the discipline and training of its own forces. 

General Crouch set the force protection standard by direction and under the authority of his 

national commander, General Joulwan, who was also the SACEUR, and who, in fact, was the 

officer assigned full responsibility under Title 10. General Joulwan did not gainsay him. It 

is doubtless correct that General Crouch’s policies placed significant limits on the conduct 

of TF Eagle operations. On the other hand, the force protection policies, as part of the US 

doctrine of presenting the hard front, was effective in gaining the parties’ compliance and 

in avoiding combat losses that would have played badly at home. The US forces remained. 

These restrictions were no more inconvenient than other national interpretations of the limits 

of NATO OPCON, among them, by the way, those of the British Framework Division, whose 

commander maintained direct ties to the United Kingdom notwithstanding the presence of 

the British commander of the ARRC (COMARRC) as NATO ground component commander. 

There was friction over applying US force principles to Americans assigned to the several 
57

NATO headquarters and to special operations soldiers, which General Joulwan had to 

adjudicate.71 By and large, the policies were maintained. General Crouch was unyielding, and, 

in the aftermath of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia the following June, he felt 

vindicated in seeking an explicit definition of his responsibilities in this regard. Equally notable 

is the fact that General Crouch was subsequently selected by the Secretary of Defense to review 

force protection measures on the USS Cole after it was attacked by terrorists in Aden in the fall 

of 2000. In the end, alliances do not have armies, nations do, and the decision about acceptable 

risk can be made only within a national chain of command.

However the US national command was structured, the distance from the home bases 

in Germany and the lack of established lines of communication east and south required an 

intermediate staging base (ISB) close to the area of operations for reception, reorganization, and 

forward movement of deployed forces on their way into Bosnia. Thereafter, the facility could 

provide for long-term sustainment and act as the National Support Element (NSE) for the forces 

committed under NATO OPCON. The ISB would also become a site for periodic retraining of 

US forces at a nearby Hungarian range (Taborfalva Range), and a base for in-country rest and 

recuperation and family visits during the year away from home. There was also the notion that 

a large base over the horizon offered flexibility for US reinforcement or extraction should the 

peace agreement not hold. 

Because Adriatic ports were clogged with UNPROFOR facilities and other NATO lines 

of communication (LOCs), it soon became clear that US movement into Bosnia would have 

to be from the north. Moreover, General Joulwan favored a concentric advance into Bosnia 

because a near simultaneous occupation offered a certain multiplier effect. In November 1995, 

Major General Jim Wright, commander of 21st TAACOM, reconnoitered sites in Croatia, Serbia, 

and Hungary. He selected a location near Kaposvar and Taszar, Hungary, for an ISB, largely 

because of the preexisting facilities, particularly a multimodal transportation network.72 

Hungary’s enthusiasm to support NATO as part of its quest for admission to the alliance, 

its economy safely immune to the ruinous effects of the Balkan war, and a US desire not to get 

too close to either of the interested neighboring parties to the recent conflict (Croatia and FRY), 

all pointed to the Hungarian solution. Consistent with his belief in personal contacts to cut 

through bureaucratic inertia, General Crouch immediately flew to Hungary and developed 

a close relationship with the US Ambassador, Donald Blinken, who was exceptionally 

supportive of military efforts in the country.73 Blinken asked Crouch how soon he needed 

permission, prefacing his remarks by pointing out that Hungary was a new democracy that 

sometimes required a long time to take major political actions. Crouch responded that he 

needed authorization at once. Ambassador Blinken did not hesitate, saying he would make 

it happen. He was as good as his word. David Lange, the USAREUR POLAD, observes that 

in 2 months a legal basis for US operations in Hungary was established comparable to that in 

Germany that had required 40 years. General Petrosky assigns no less importance to several 

direct coordination visits by General Crouch to meet with Hungarian military leaders. These, 

in turn, were greatly facilitated by the personal contacts made by General Crouch that same 

summer as part of a series of Engagement and Enlargement visits.74

Kaposvar-Taszar would be the home of the US National Support Element, consisting of 

Headquarters, USAREUR (Forward) and the 21st TAACOM (Forward), the latter a logistics 

command cobbled together from elements of the 21st TAACOM and V Corps’ 3d COSCOM. 

Brigadier General Sam Kindred, the 3d COSCOM commander, would run the 21st TAACOM 

(Forward) as Wright’s deputy. Joining the limited elements of the two skeletal support 

commands also compensated for individual unit weaknesses until relief from outside the 

theater could be made available.

One clear responsibility of the Army service component commander involves equipping 
58

and training forces provided to the theater commander to accomplish operational missions. 

As discussed previously, in the summer and fall of 1999, USAREUR and V Corps were heavily 

involved in both tasks. Intensive training for Bosnia operations began as already indicated with 

the TF Lion preparations to rescue NATO forces trapped in encircled UN safe areas in Bosnia. 

Essentially, the plans called for a small light infantry force, heavily supported with multiservice 

aerial firepower, to move into the pockets at night, extract only the UNPROFOR personnel, and 

return to a staging base. 

The first training exercise, MOUNTAIN SHIELD I, was conducted from 3 to 25 July 1995 in 

and around the Seventh ATC in Bavaria. The exercise was a sequential and progressive series 

of training events of increasing difficulty, culminating in a final night certification rehearsal that 

imitated in detail and complexity the anticipated mission. MOUNTAIN SHIELD II, conducted 

in September to sustain the forces’ ability to perform the extraction mission, was even more 

complex, as a second simultaneous extraction had been added to the base mission.75 The two 

mission rehearsals, which were extraordinary training accomplishments in their own right, 

prepared General Abrams and the USAREUR training community for the larger MOUNTAIN 

EAGLE exercise that followed in late September, October, and early November. The purpose 

of Exercise MOUNTAIN EAGLE was to train the 1st Armored Division’s TF Eagle for the peace 

enforcement mission that was finally executed.

The 1st Armored Division was scheduled for semiannual gunnery training at the Seventh 

ATC in late September 1995 before the Bosnia mission began to take form. The normal combat 

training rotation was taken over and incorporated into a specific mission-focused training 

regime designed to prepare the unique TF Eagle structure for its complex peace enforcement 

mission. The exercise combined a series of seminars, deployment exercises (DEPLOYEXs), 

command post exercises (CPXs), and situational training exercises (STXs) into a multiechelon 

training program leading to a validation exercise from 24 to 26 October requiring the task force 

to perform all the tasks anticipated in a simulated sector. General Abrams used the GrafenwöhrHohenfels training complex and a local training area near Amberg, Germany, to approximate 

the dimensions of the sector to be occupied in Bosnia. The exercise began with a torturous night 

road march in a snowstorm that was marred by road accidents with German civilians. The 

difficulties reflected both the weather and the fact that by 1995 the European Army no longer 

conducted training on the terrain as it had in the Cold War, and tactical night marches in the 

countryside had become one of many lost skills.76

Subsequent to the validation exercise, additional training was conducted to bring weak skills 

up to standard. Two things made the MOUNTAIN EAGLE exercises particularly intensive. 

First, the USAREUR commander supported the exercise with his whole command. Second, 

the exercise design was remarkably fluid. By committing the resources of USAREUR to the 

training problem, the USAREUR commander made sure observer-controllers, master trainers, 

and data collectors, in particular, went deep into the organization. This meant that multiechelon 

performance could be evaluated simultaneously. The command dedicated 2,400 support 

personnel to the training exercise, about 1 for every 10 trainees. These included 11 general 

officers, 17 brigade commanders, 31 battalion commanders, and 550 officer controllers.

The USAREUR standard for individual training and preparation was detailed and 

absolute. Ensuring that every soldier was properly trained was intended to be serious business 

guaranteed by certification and external evaluation. As noted earlier, certification of particulars 

imposed a substantial bookkeeping requirement on unit commanders during an intense and 

continuous training experience. Moreover, some commanders believed that when it came to 

issuing designated winter clothing items, their importance for certification did not influence the 

willingness of the supply system to deliver the various items of individual equipment required.77

Still, certification clearly focused commanders’ attention on the details of soldier preparation.
59

The fluidity of the leadership training was the product of the scripting done by the V Corps 

G2, Colonel Maxie MacFarland. MacFarland designed into the master incident list (MIL) 

problems that had confronted UNPROFOR, tasks arising from the explicit requirements of the 

emerging Dayton Accords, and even some that were occurring in real time in Bosnia, as training 

went on. Brigadier General B. B. Bell, who acted as the key training coordinator, reflected later 

that the training plan he was executing on any particular day was normally no more than 4 

days old, near simultaneous execution.78 The overall training objective for the leadership 

was also unique. Whereas routine combat training focuses on developing disciplined tactical 

responses to a limited number of standard possible situations, MOUNTAIN EAGLE combined 

this training for rehearsed and drilled tactical actions with an intellectual reorientation of the 

leadership. Leaders from squad to division level refocused from more or less standard combat 

operations to the complexities of civil-military operations in a war-torn countryside where civil 

structures had been all but destroyed. General Abrams recognized that, unlike the detailed 

prescriptive program for MOUNTAIN SHIELD’s limited strike operation, MOUNTAIN EAGLE 

had to prepare the entire division chain of command for a less-structured, more ambiguous, and 

more prolonged set of challenges. The leaders had to think in different ways about new kinds of 

problems. The exercise program was intended to require brigade and division staffs

to re-orient their analytical approaches in order to recognize relationships between apparently 

disparate events, and force commanders to focus on the types of non-military situations which 

would probably become priority concerns.79

This required some major analytical work by all concerned to discover the hidden structures 

underlying overt events. Because the nature of the operation tended to alter in response to 

opposition, developing a proper analytical process or style was far more important than trying to 

indoctrinate the target audience with a particular solution. In that respect, along with providing 

a model of what can be done with doctrinal training when resources are fairly unconstrained 

(the exercise cost more than $2 million), MOUNTAIN EAGLE broke new ground in preparing 

its target audience for the thinking man’s game of peace enforcement. Leaders were trained to 

read a new kind of battlefield by understanding a different kind of conflict, while units were 

drilled in execution to standard of all the military tasks emerging from the ongoing negotiations 

at Dayton. As in other respects in USAREUR, the brigade level of command was particularly 

stressed as commanders sought time to train their battalions while involved in CPXs with their 

higher commands and, simultaneously, developing the plans they would ultimately have to 

execute.

In addition to training the executing force at Seventh ATC, USAREUR simultaneously 

enacted a unique training program designed to prepare rear detachments and area support 

groups to care for and support the military families remaining behind in Germany while 

TF Eagle conducted its business in the Balkans. Certification of training to standard of rear 

detachment commanders and underwriting of family support teams were key parts of this 

program. General Crouch gave the programs for the home front his personal attention, both in 

preparation and execution, following up periodically especially through his SOTP.80 He insisted 

that deploying commanders leave high quality officers behind to command rear detachments. 

He sought agreement from the Army Chief of Staff, which he received, that subsequent 

promotion boards would be instructed to consider an officer’s selection for rear detachment 

command as an acknowledgement of his high quality rather than the reverse.

Once the mission became public, General Crouch issued a chain of command briefing, 

a scripted overview explaining to troops and family members the USAREUR mission in 

the Balkans, preparation that would be undertaken to get the force ready for deployment, a 
60

background history of the Balkan conflict, and an explanation of US involvement. The briefing 

detailed the additional cold weather equipment intended for issue to each soldier, and such 

personal considerations as additional financial entitlements for deployed soldiers, return 

polices for families wishing to go home to CONUS, and support programs in place for families 

remaining in Europe. The briefing closed with a firm CINC commitment: “You can tell your 

families that our commanders will ensure that all services, programs, and processes are in place 

to support them.”81

Simultaneously with the conduct of the MOUNTAIN EAGLE exercise, NATO, USAREUR, 

V Corps, and 1st Armored Division planners conducted the execution planning that resulted 

at the end of November in the various published plans that would be put into effect within 

the month. The planning process had been continuous, although it had moved at different 

speeds in the various headquarters.82 By necessity, as the tempo of decisions increased, 

planning between echelons was parallel rather than sequential, with the scope of the various 

plans overlapping and the focus differing according to task. The final plans issued in late 

November and early December 1995 reflect different staffs’ understanding of agreements and 

decisions made throughout the summer and early fall. They were coordinated by circulation 

and by cross-fertilization as various planners met at the several headquarters. The planning 

process continued to be dynamic to the end as requirements changed consequent to ongoing 

negotiations both at Dayton and within NATO, the latter dealing particularly with inserting 

specialized national forces to meet various bilateral and international needs.83

While the basic US force structure was settled, various modifications in detail were required 

to accommodate last-minute agreements for international support. All changes had to be 

accommodated under the declared US national force cap. The cost of participation of an allied 

unit might be loss of a part of the US national force. When something new went in, something 

else had to come out. Detailed deployment data had to be changed accordingly. It made for an 

intense couple of months. Regarding deployment, it would be clear that essential but second 

order level of detail planning was neither adequately coordinated between headquarters nor 

executed within headquarters.84 Consequently, when stressed by events, the command had to 

revert to brute force logistics to get the force deployed in accordance with its mission timelines.85

Deployment execution was neither pretty nor efficient, but it was effective. The US framework 

division force was in place on time in spite of delays in critical decisionmaking, mistaken 

planning assumptions, breakdown of deployment tracking systems, and apparently arbitrary 

decisions at the Joint Staff level during execution.

The USAREUR Operation Plans (OPLAN) 40105 (Campaign Plan) and 4243 (Service 

Component Support Plan) and the 1st Armored Division IRON ENDEAVOR OPLAN 

organized the forces to flow into Bosnia by echelon, beginning with the NSE and various 

NATO enabling forces.86 These would be followed by an initial entry force (the division tactical 

operations center, the 3d Battalion, 325th Airborne Battalion Combat Team from TF Lion, a 

target acquisition battery, and a medical detachment); the LOC opening force (four engineer 

companies and the 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry); an aviation strike force (4th Brigade [Aviation] of 

the 1st Armored Division) to provide overwatch and support from Hungary (thus not counting 

against the in-country end strength); a ZOS activation force (two brigade combat teams from 

the division); and the remaining division troops.87 The enabling forces and initial entry forces 

would move by air into the AOR to establish the NATO command and introduce the American 

framework division presence at Tuzla (and secure the airfield), while the main divisional force 

moved from the central region to the ISB overland.88 There, units would upload ammunition, 

reorganize in tactical echelons, undergo last-minute combat checks, and move tactically to the 

Sava River. The task force was to conduct a doctrinally by-the-book deliberate river crossing 

of the Sava near Zupanja, Croatia, then move overland to Tuzla, clearing and securing the LOC 
61

for the forces that would follow.89 It was anticipated that the 2d Brigade would follow the 1st in 

sequence, and the two brigades would occupy their sectors of the ZOS by the Dayton assigned 

date of D+30 (19 January 1996). 

The deployment schedule, always tight, was complicated by the NCA’s withholding of 

permission for reconnaissance prior to execution. Indeed, the division commander, Major 

General Nash, was permitted only one reconnaissance visit (22-27 October) to his sector during 

the MOUNTAIN EAGLE exercise. The Dayton agreement set a number of fixed deadlines 

reckoned from D-day, TOA to IFOR (20 December). These deadlines set the requirement for the 

presence of US IFOR forces in the AOR.

1. Withdrawal of all forces “not of local origin” D+ 30 days.

2. Establishment of the ZOS D+ 30 days.

3. Withdrawal into interentity boundaries D+ 45 days.

4. Occupation of areas surrendered by withdrawals D+ 90 days. 

5. Withdrawal of heavy weapons and forces into cantonment areas D+120 days.

6. Demobilization of excess forces D+120 days.

Other deadlines were set for turning off air defense systems and providing specific 

information to IFOR. Obviously, the critical deadline from USAREUR’s perspective was 

establishing the ZOS by D+30. 90

The airborne battalion from SETAF’s Task Force Lion led the Army deployment into Bosnia, 

securing the airfield at Tuzla. However, deployment planning got off track almost at once as 

certain assumptions made before the fact became unstuck in execution. USAREUR planners 

had made a number of assumptions about the timing of the deployment flow, all based on 

the establishment of G (Go)-day, the date the NAC would approve SACEUR OPLAN 40105. 

Under the SACEUR plan, the IFOR enabling forces were to be in place to relieve UNPROFOR at 

G+96 hours (G+4). Planners assumed that the NATO enabling forces and the USAREUR RSOI 

Force at the ISB would require 14 days to get in place, so a C (commence movement)-day was 

planned for G-14 days, or 2 December.91 Combat forces would then follow in sequence through 

the ISB with movement beginning on G-day, a date depending on passage of an authorizing 

UN Security Council Resolution. Using the ISB would permit administrative efficiency in the 

strategic rail movement and effective control over tactical movement to the river-crossing site.

The difficulty came when the JCS waited until 4 December to issue the US national execution 

order (EXORD) for the RSOI force. Clearance to begin movement of the NSE into Hungary 

required General Crouch’s personal intervention with National Security Adviser Anthony Lake 

during an early December Presidential visit to the US base at Baumholder.92 General Crouch 

had ordered trains on 27 November in anticipation of a 2 December movement date, but the 

anticipated JCS EXORD for the RSOI force had not arrived.93 Demurrage costs for unused trains 

were estimated to risk up to $55,000 per day.94 Once the execution order was issued on the 4th, 

it took 2 days (until the 6th) for EUCOM to translate the JCS order into a EUCOM EXORD. The 

JCS imposed unanticipated limitations on the size of the RSOI force, a reduction of about 50 

percent. Advanced deployment was limited to 3,000, down from the planned 6,800.95 A change 

of that magnitude obviously required some significant reprogramming of a movement already 

late in beginning.

However, this is not to say that the delay in deployment resulted only from bureaucratic 

stumbling at JCS or EUCOM. The critical path seems to lie elsewhere, in that the force 

deployment of December 1995 was not simply a huge transportation endeavor involving the 

German, or West European, rail system, but also, for the first time since World War II, a giant 

NATO political enterprise. Movement through sovereign and unallied nations required transit 
62

authority and Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) and, in two critical cases (Austria and 

Hungary), modifications of national law in the host or transited nations. On 1 December, General 

Crouch learned that no one had obtained the necessary political clearances permitting passage 

of foreign (US) soldiers, much less uploaded weapon systems, through the several states lying 

across the LOC with Bosnia. USAREUR planners had assumed that this sort of business would 

be handled by SHAPE or EUCOM, the headquarters responsible for international negotiations. 

In any event, nothing effective had been done. General Crouch gave the task to Colonel Larry 

Dodgen and the CINC’s Initiative Group. Dodgen spent the first night on the phone establishing 

what was required, then he and the members of the initiatives group began working through 

the US military representatives in the embassies concerned to coordinate passage of US forces 

en route to Bosnia. The Department of State notified the ambassadors, mobilizing their support, 

and the necessary clearances and SOFA were in hand by 9 December, the result of one busy 

week’s work. A bilateral agreement with Hungary allowing for the extensive national support 

requirements was established on 12 December thanks to Ambassador Blinken’s efforts.96

The first train was loaded on 7 December and departed on the 8th, almost a week late. The 

critical date for implementation was still the TOA from UNPROFOR to IFOR, and that took place 

as anticipated on 20 December. The 1st Armored Division quartering party arrived in Tuzla on 

6 December. From that point, the deployment plan had to be rewritten as the Balkan winter, 

unrealized planning assumptions, railroad strikes, low holiday manning of the rail systems, 

unrelated sabotage, a near total breakdown of movement control systems, and a general lack 

of coordination and a common discipline destroyed the underpinnings of the deployment 

concept.97 

The difficulties of inserting the division assault command post (CP) are illustrative on a 

small scale of the collective problems involved in moving into the AOR. TOA from UNPROFOR 

to NATO was scheduled for 20 December. The division assault CP, led by Brigadier General 

Stan Cherrie, began to fly toward Tuzla on 15 December. It was turned back by weather on 

3 successive days. It finally arrived at Sarajevo on the 17th and moved to Tuzla overland in 

borrowed vehicles. The natural difficulties of the Balkan weather were compounded by the 

absence of ground control radar and landing lights at Tuzla. Mine-clearing equipment was 

needed to emplace new lights, as the ground around the airstrip had been mined during the 

conflict, and mine-clearing equipment was somewhere back in the equipment flow. In short, 

the notion that there was an aerial quick fix to burgeoning ground transportation problems was 

naïve, given the conditions of the Balkan winter of 1995-96.

The revised movement plan called for combining portions of the 1st Brigade Combat 

Team and the LOC opening force and moving them with their ammunition directly to the 

river crossing site at Zupanja. The 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry, was called to its railhead on 10 

December and arrived at Vrpolje on the 18th. The 1st Brigade followed immediately. When 

the brigade commander, Colonel Greg Fontenot, called the ISB to submit his first report on the 

19th, the phone was answered by General Crouch, the CINCUSAREUR. Fontenot was, to say 

the least, nonplussed. The units had to unload themselves and find what accommodations 

they could while they prepared to receive the engineers and prepare for the deliberate river 

crossing. 98

The decision had been taken early on to base the movement of US forces into eastern Europe 

on rail transport, rail being the most reliable form of long-distance heavy-equipment movement 

during the European winter. USAREUR planners had not anticipated the reduction in surge 

capacity that had resulted generally from the postunification privatization of the German rail 

system, nor did they have much of an idea about what was involved in moving beyond the 

German national system that served them in garrison and in the field in the Central Region. 

Planning had been based on an assumption of 20 trains a day, twice the system rate between 
63

Germany and Croatia, particularly when commercial traffic was to be left largely unhindered.99

On top of that, a rail strike in France isolated necessary freight cars, and an unrelated act of 

sabotage disrupted the German rail net.

There were also structural problems. One of the most seriously constrained elements of the 

21st TAACOM was the 1st Theater Movement Control Agency, which had an ALO 8 manning 

level (35 percent).100 Two DEPLOYEXs conducted during MOUNTAIN EAGLE had exposed a 

number of weaknesses in the load-out SOP that called for providing rail loading support from 

the several area support groups and a general lack of detailed knowledge of transportation 

procedures. Although many of the weaknesses in planning assumptions were addressed, some 

fundamental problems, particularly concerning staffing and using electronic transportation 

management systems, could not be corrected in the time available. Moreover, the management 

systems necessary to conduct what was, in fact, a theater strategic rail movement (NATO 

Standardization Agreements [STANAGs] and those necessary to provide US worldwide 

visibility (Joint Operations Planning and Execution System [JOPES] and Standard Theater 

Army Command and Control Systems [STACCS] proved to be incompatible and extremely 

user unfriendly. Moreover, movement staffs in all headquarters were undermanned and 

undertrained in detailed systems management. Not surprisingly, the systems broke down.

Once the notional rail movement plan broke down, the natural response was to incorporate 

air movement, particularly using the new Air Force C-17 strategic airlifter just coming into 

the inventory for intratheater as well as intertheater airlift. But there were problems here too. 

One problem dealt with the difficulty of getting Bosnian runways up to instrument standards 

for winter flying. The Tuzla airstrip took some time for instrumentation to be established 

and verified. That was a minor problem compared to the fact that introducing air movement 

changed what had been essentially a deliberate, uniservice, single-modal movement problem 

into a joint service multimodal project for which there was no single joint command outside of 

EUCOM. More fundamentally, it changed it from a task that could be managed in extremis by 

Microsoft EXCEL spreadsheets, to one that required using JOPES, in which, as it turned out, 

all echelons of command in USAREUR were deficient.101 The deployment plan was changed 

in execution, using what General Bell at USAREUR (Forward) called an “operational [rail and 

road] maneuver of forces.”102 

The revised plan was to send the lead elements of the new LOC opening forces (1st Brigade, 

1st Armored Division, commanded by Colonel Greg Fontenot, together with the requisite 

engineers) directly to the crossing site and other available railheads in the vicinity. In January, as 

the date for ZOS implementation approached, part of the 2d Brigade was moved by air into Tuzla 

and through Belgrade to ensure control of the ZOS by the D+30 deadline and, coincidentally, 

to engage FRY President Milosevic publicly in support of the NATO mission.103 The revision in 

movement of the 2d Brigade involved the delay of some key 1st Brigade elements, most notably 

an armored battalion and the forward support battalion.104 The movement of TF Eagle was 

carried out only with a good deal of costly inefficiency; generation of heat between the Army 

and Air Force; and misrouting of trains, units, and material handling equipment. In the words 

of the EUCOM after-action report, based largely on an inspector general inquiry ordered by the 

CINCUSAREUR to accurately identify the sources of the problems experienced:

The movement was conducted without validated Time Phased Force Deployment Data (TPFDD) 

and with little adherence to joint doctrine. Problems were overcome by application of money, men 

and rank. (It is estimated that the cost to the US of the OJE deployment will be more than triple 

the $1.5 billion originally projected.) Finally, the deployment saw many automated movement 

control systems (albeit some still in development) proven ineffective once again, forcing reliance 

on telephone, faxes, and liaison officers for control when things inevitably went wrong.105
64

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Jones, who was dragooned into creating a deployment operations 

cell for the 1st Armored Division in mid-crisis, said more succinctly but no less accurately: 

I have seen numerous articles and speeches in which people have lauded the deployment to Bosnia as 

a great success. I would categorize it as more of a triumph of the human spirit over an insane system, 

narrowly averting catastrophe.106

With that said, the deployment was ultimately put right and completed by the assigned date 

in February, even with an operational pause to calibrate the arrival of forces into the AOR with 

engineer support to construct rudimentary encampments to house them. And with regard to the 

pause, there lies another tale, the extent to which contemporary military operations depend on the 

availability of contractor support to compensate for force structure deficiencies.

Since the Gulf War, it has been evident that the US military goes to war largely through the good 

offices of defense contractors. The Department of State’s use of MPRI has already been mentioned. 

The Army went to Bosnia courtesy of Brown and Root, who contracted to build and operate 

the US base camps to provide a minimal level of comfort to US forces entering Bosnia during a 

severe Balkan winter. The large-scale use of contractors (called Logistics Civil Augmentation 

Program [LOGCAP]) was necessary because the Army no longer maintains a strong reserve of 

construction engineers in the Active force structure. Contractors also accomplish much of the 

routine housekeeping and sustainment, thus in theory preserving uniformed end strength for focus 

entirely on military tasks.107 The difficulty lies in the fact that contractors have their own runup 

time to prepare for major operations, and they do not move until they are paid. Like everything 

else having to do with money in the fall of 1995, funds to hire contractors simply were not available 

in advance nor, coincidentally, were the declarations of contingency authority that would permit 

expedited large dollar contracting.108 The result was that US forces headed into the Balkan winter 

with a deficit of engineering support. 

General Crouch was sensitive to troop operational efficiency and basic comfort, plus what he 

called the “CNN factor,” the likely response of the American people to television shots of US forces 

living in squalor in the Balkan winter, revealed night after night at the domestic dinner hour by the 

narrowly focused lens of television cameras. The CINC’s Initiative Group analyzed the troop flow 

rate versus the tempo of base camp construction early in the deployment, demonstrating to the 

CINC that base camp construction would never keep pace. This was particularly the case since, once 

they were on the ground and could judge the difficulties of winter intrazonal movement, brigade 

commanders opted for decentralized encampment rather than the anticipated consolidation into 

larger common facilities.109 

This change in plan was the result of conditions found on the ground that differed from 

those anticipated during planning. During planning, it had been necessary, without preliminary 

reconnaissance, to visualize how to take over the force-separation mission from UNPROFOR, 

simultaneously assume command of, indeed, create a multinational division, and immediately 

dominate the environment in the MND-North zone of operations. The tactical actions called for 

were most similar to a traditional cavalry mission based upon aggressive presence and patrolling. 

At the start it was decided to establish big base camps from which strong forces capable of 

dominating any confrontation could be dispatched as required. However, once on the ground, lines 

of movement were found to be highly restricted, low ground was supersaturated from the winter 

rains, and known and unknown minefields proved to be more of an obstacle to movement than had 

been anticipated. Colonel Greg Fontenot and Lieutenant Colonel Tony Cuculo, one of Fontenot’s 

battalion commanders (and formerly a personal staff officer to CINCUSAREUR), briefed General 

Crouch on these conditions soon after their deployment into Bosnia. Finally able to talk through 

the mission on the ground, General Crouch and the officers of Task Force Eagle recognized that 
65

a different approach was required. Brigade operations would have to be more decentralized, 

with forces located in smaller battalion camps, placed strategically throughout the zone of 

separation, to maintain the line of demarcation and facilitate simultaneous and continuous 

interaction with civil authorities and various levels of factional military command. Ubiquity 

had a concrete value in terms of situational awareness and dominance of the countryside, as 

well as mobility. That in turn meant USAREUR engineers had to construct more camps than 

originally anticipated--all this in the wet Balkan winter.

To pick up the slack, General Crouch stopped the flow of troops to make way for the 

introduction of military engineer units. He was supported in this by the Navy and Air Force, 

who dispatched Seabee (CB, for construction battalion) and Red Horse construction units to 

make up for Army deficiencies. The presence of additional engineers for the period of crisis 

had to be managed, of course, against the approved troop ceilings. Thus was introduced a 

welcome pause in the deployment of TF Eagle that helped transportation managers get a 

grip on the larger movement problem and begin sending units through the ISB as originally 

anticipated. It also allowed many equipment issue shortfalls to be identified and rectified. On 

the other hand, because the pause slowed the rate of buildup in Bosnia, it was naturally resented 

by the commanders already there. Since the implementation clock was already running, that 

meant platoons often were sent to do a job that called for a company, and some post cease-fire 

vandalism by withdrawing forces in MND-N could not be dealt with.110

Two other aspects of the deployment process demonstrate the key role of the Army 

commander in the JOINT ENDEAVOR deployment. These involve gathering political 

information to support military decisionmaking in general as well as the decisions concerning 

crossing the Sava River for entry into Bosnia.

The first issue has to do with a commander developing the ability to anticipate political 

decisions with sufficient clarity to issue his own orders about preparation in sufficient time to be 

ready when the decision to execute is issued. Staff college instructors would have you believe 

that the interagency process and joint chain of command are adequate to do this. Anyone with 

experience in hierarchical organizations knows instinctively this is hardly the case. In the 

movement into Bosnia, General Crouch had to seek his own sources of information, particularly 

about those political decisions that called for rapid military actions that had inherent long lead 

times for preparation. Some examples already given are training and rehearsing the force, 

ordering special equipment, ordering trains, and initiating such contracts as could be entered into 

without department approval. General Crouch believed that information derives from personal 

contact. His POLAD, Dave Lange, traveled to the State Department to personally contact those 

officials who could be useful conduits of information either to or from the interagency process in 

Washington. Similarly, Crouch spent much of his time (and invested some of General Abrams’) 

in getting to know the right European policymakers (in Abrams’ case, the gentlemen who run the 

German rail system) to ensure that when a crisis occurred the two decisionmakers on opposite 

ends of the phone knew and understood each other.111 These efforts paid handsome dividends 

during the deployment. Crouch acquired from the NSC a schedule of anticipated Presidential 

decisions to implement Dayton. Indeed, forecast of the successful completion of an agreement 

at Dayton came from the POLAD, who was called by one his contacts in Department of State 

when the USAREUR deputy chief of staff for intelligence was still being told no agreement was 

in the offing.112 General Crouch’s personal relationship with Ambassador Blinken in Budapest 

has already been alluded to.

Finally, the Balkan winter of 1995-96 proved to be unpredictable in one other decisive 

fashion. The Danube, and consequently the Sava, flooded to record breaking width in 

December while the US Army was arriving on its banks. US Army engineers, watched by the 

ubiquitous cameras of CNN, assembled one of the longest float bridges seen in Europe since 
66

World War II. To provide enough bridge sections to the two bridge companies allocated to the 

plan, General Crouch gained permission to withdraw the equipment of an entire additional float 

bridge company from national pre-positioned war reserve stocks retained in Europe during the 

drawdown. The additional bridge sections were flown in by C-17; then, to avoid the traffic jam 

around the crossing site, CH-47 helicopters moved the bridge sections forward, largely on the 

assurance to General Crouch from an engineer captain that his troops knew how to emplace them 

by helicopter. While the pundits complained about a delay in crossing, General Crouch and TF 

Eagle assembled their forces and, on 31 December, conducted what was probably the longest 

doctrinally correct deliberate river crossing in Europe since World War II. TF Eagle had arrived 

in Bosnia.

As the new NATO force assembled, it became necessary to limit the extent to which the NATO 

ground commander (COMARRC) was free to interpret the authority of NATO OPCON, under 

which the contributed forces had been provided by the national governments. This was done for 

US Forces by Fragmentary Order (FRAGO) 5 to the USAREUR EXORD, issued by CINCUSAREUR 

on 17 January 1996.113 

FRAGO 5 was a USAREUR document. It was, in fact, sent from the CINCUSAREUR to the 

commander of TF Eagle, Major General Nash, with information to the NATO chain of command. 

FRAGO 5 was drafted by Colonel Doug Walters and Colonel Paul Tiberi in Heidelberg at General 

Crouch’s direction.114 Tiberi ran the USAREUR Crisis Action Cell in DCSOPS. The document was 

sent out following the dispatch of Apache helicopters by Nash, in response to instructions from 

Lieutenant General Walker, COMARRC, to hunt for snipers in the French Multinational DivisionSoutheast (MND-SE) sector in Sarajevo. The concern at USAREUR resulted from memories of the 

Black Hawk helicopter shoot-down in Somalia and also from the question of how appropriate a 

shot from a Hellfire missile into a Sarajevo apartment building might look on CNN as a response 

to a sniper, given the existing US political climate. There was also a general concern that NATOordered out-of-sector missions were already becoming a pattern in Bosnia, but were, when lacking 

proper authorization, contrary to national policy and the principle of equitable burden sharing by 

framework nations. The message reminded General Nash (and any NATO readers) that TF Eagle 

had been provided for limited purposes and for use within a particular sector, and any deviation 

from either the purposes or sector required advance approval from the US national authorities.

It remains an open question whether, strictly speaking, the USAREUR commander, who 

had surrendered OPCON on Eagle’s crossing the Sava, had the authority to issue such an order, 

although, again strictly speaking, it did no more than advise a subordinate of the limits under 

which it said he already acted. The message is striking, too, in its similarity to the limits expressed 

in PDD-25, though the source of the similarity is unclear.115 General Crouch has said that the real 

issue in question at that time was the pending transfer of a US countermortar radar to Sarajevo to 

replace another country’s system that was being withdrawn. He was, he says, inclined to support 

the request but had, first, to secure first permission and somehow to reconcile the manpower it 

would require within the force cap.116 In any event, whether or not he exceeded his authority in 

sending the message, General Crouch set down the marker that would continue to delimit the US 

interpretation of NATO OPCON beyond Bosnia and into Kosovo.117 As will be seen in subsequent 

chapters, this policy and understanding of the limits of NATO OPCON was not unique to the US 

forces.

General Crouch went back to Washington, DC, in late January 1996 to update DA and 

DOD leaders on the status of affairs in Bosnia. He briefed the Army’s Senior Staff Council on 

25 January. His briefing reviewed the training and preparation of Army forces; addressed the 

challenges to overcome to carry off the deployment; explained the decision to conduct a doctrinal 

river crossing; and reported that, as of the 26th, 85 percent of TF Eagle had deployed (more than 

20,700 soldiers, 12,000 pieces of equipment, and 155 aircraft). Crouch was candid in outlining 
67

the difficulties involved in the deployment and expressed pride in the safety record the force 

had already achieved. He then discussed ongoing sustainment issues, particularly base camp 

construction, the status of the force, and anticipated operations. He finished by explaining what 

USAREUR was doing to sustain the communities taking care of the deployed forces’ family 

members. In contrast with the experience of the Gulf War, 98 percent of the families elected to 

remain in the community at Baumholder while their soldiers were deployed, a clear indication 

of the success of USAREUR family-focused efforts. Crouch pointed out that what was left of 

USAREUR, essentially the 3d Infantry Division (minus), now at about 87 percent of its ALO, 

continued to carry on routine missions, deployments, and military-to-military programs with 

former Warsaw Pact nations. He outlined the challenges if a serious contingency should arise in 

light of the commitment of V Corps and much of the 3d Infantry. The Central Region units were 

left at about 82 to 88 percent strength on average. Finally, he closed by reporting on his insights 

to date, most significantly that “Army doctrine works.”

USAREUR began stabilizing the irregularities of contingency support to Bosnia and receiving 

backfill from CONUS for vacancies left by the deployed force. Reserve Component units flowed 

through Europe for movement into Hungary and Bosnia. Standards were established for base 

camp construction, and routine business review procedures were established and enforced.118

General Crouch spent about 2 days every week in Hungary and Bosnia, monitoring particularly 

the living conditions and general discipline and training of the troops, exercising some care not to 

intrude on operational matters that were not his responsibility. Plans were made to restructure 

the force at midyear, though there was some discontinuity with the instructions given by the 

NAC and the US DOD. A US Presidential election would be held in November 1996, and it 

was certain that, no matter what happened in Bosnia, there would be no backing off the 1-year 

withdrawal commitment or any decision on regarding follow-on operations until the election 

was over. In the meantime, EUCOM and USAREUR hit on a mechanism to be adaptable to all 

possible decisions come 1 December 1996. USAREUR came up with a scheme to withdraw TF 

Eagle before its 365-day deadline, while providing for a covering force from Meigs’’ division 

that could either cover the withdrawal of Eagle and then withdraw itself by some future date, or 

it could become the basis of a replacement force, should the NAC members elect to continue the 

mission beyond the year for which they had committed to following Dayton. Sometime early 

that year, General Crouch was informed that he would be intimately involved in whatever came 

to pass in Bosnia, as NATO was discussing a proposal to insert an American four-star general in 

the rotation (normally German and Dutch) of Headquarters Allied Land Forces, Central Europe 

(LANDCENT). LANDCENT was then to go to Bosnia to relieve both IFOR and the ARRC as the 

follow-on operational headquarters. The latter was not made public, however, until July 1996.

The most important proposition offered in this and the previous chapter is that operations 

in Bosnia, and the leadership requirements placed on the USAREUR commander, arose out of 

particular organizational and temporal contexts. The organizational context, particularly the 

role of the Army service component commander, meant that General Crouch was principally 

a force provider for the CINCEUR, although he retained operational responsibility for various 

minor operations, minor in terms of the scale of forces committed. Initially, his concerns 

involved preparing units for combat, achieving a high degree of efficiency in the post-drawdown 

European Army, a force structured largely by his predecessors, and restoring a reasonable 

degree of stability for the soldiers and families in his care. His managerial style involved 

deriving and articulating clear, reasonable, and measurable standards and then overseeing 

their disciplined execution. Simply put, General Crouch developed a detailed vision of what he 

wanted USAREUR to be like, promulgated the vision to his subordinates, and then saw to it that 

performance was measured against the standards set. Stability was to be sought by achieving 

predictability in scheduling and in defining what was wanted before the fact. Characteristically, 
68

General Crouch also let his subordinates and their families know what could be expected of 

him, most notably in his published statement of purpose and in the chain of command briefing 

given once the Bosnia mission was public. The attention he gave to incorporating spouses into 

his Senior Leader Training Program and ensuring that attention was given to their concerns by 

his staff is also noteworthy. Clearly, there were limits on how much stability could be provided 

in Europe under conditions where mechanized infantry battalions were away from home more 

than 40 percent of the time. Senior leaders and troop staffs were probably beyond relief in light 

of the heavy commitment to international engagement operations, but, that notwithstanding 

General Crouch’s leadership style was well-suited to bringing order out of the post-drawdown 

turmoil and to increasing efficiency in operating costs.

Then came Bosnia. Actually, the threat of a Bosnia mission had been there all along, but 

it had required little out-of-the-ordinary contingency planning and battle preparation that 

armies always do. What changed in 1995 was that events in Bosnia rose to a crisis, making US 

involvement increasingly likely though, for a long time, ill-defined in terms of content. The 

process of USAREUR’s engagement illustrates anomalies produced by the organization of 

defense activities in the United States, and it was marked as well by the fact that, like the later 

war in Kosovo, the actions intended were largely single service in requirement. As a result of 

that single-service content, the USAREUR CINC assumed significant operational responsibilities, 

largely by virtue of the demands of service-unique technical expertise and national interest. The 

Bosnia mission demanded a degree of creativity and flexibility in approach that could be built 

only on a deep and detailed knowledge of the capabilities of the instruments to be employed 

and a willingness to think outside of the box to produce new approaches to organization and 

procedure in light of the differences in the problems to be confronted. Disciplined adherence 

to procedure (“Army Doctrine Works”) was the lubricant to facilitate much of the structural 

improvisation in execution.

The Army service component commander is expected to organize, train, equip, and sustain 

service forces committed to action by a combatant CINC. In Europe, this role is complicated 

when the joint headquarters, USEUCOM, provides forces to NATO rather than engaging them 

itself. For minor short-duration unilateral actions, the kind EUCOM normally conducts, the 

pattern is to appoint a subordinate headquarters, a JTF, assign the mission and resources, and 

monitor execution, charging interested components to provide support as required. Even 

smaller missions, for example, PfP activities, are simply farmed out to individual components 

with EUCOM ensuring appropriate interservice support and monitoring execution in a general 

sense. Bosnia fitted neither paradigm.

The US commitment to Bosnia involved a major commitment of national resources and 

prestige to an alliance effort, for a prolonged period of time in a dangerous undertaking of 

doubtful positive political value (it was protection against loss rather than action to achieve a 

gain). Moreover, it occurred during in a period of radical political division at home. Because of 

the unique nature of the mission, and the force cap limits, creativity was required in designing 

the force to be employed. Once formed, the force had to be trained for a new type of mission 

in a new environment. Special equipment was required and had to be obtained in anticipation 

of the mission, and as both training and equipping cost large amounts of money, the service 

component commander had to take a significant risk on the part of the theater and his parent 

department, in effect mediating the requirements of the operator, the combatant commander, 

with the service department, long before mission execution was a sure thing. General Crouch’s 

actions can be characterized as those of a reasonable and prudent man confronted with matters 

of great importance and significant long-term risk.119

Then, because the mission required deploying forces at some distance from their peacetime 

base and because it was believed, incorrectly as it turned out, that intratheater land transport, 
69

for which the predominant service was responsible, would be adequate, the service component 

commander retained responsibility for the theater strategic movement of the majority of the 

committed force. This, in turn, entailed the safe delivery of combat-ready forces into the NATO 

AOR, including an operational movement to the Sava and conduct of a deliberate (tactical) river 

crossing in winter during a major flood. To accomplish these actions successfully required 

much anticipation based on an ability to reach out and gain information from political as well 

as military sources and, indeed, international as well as national sources. It would have been 

impossible to be ready when the political decisions were taken had General Crouch depended 

on delivery of information through the normal chain of command. Of course, not being ready 

would not have meant not going; rather, it would have been expressed in hardship and danger 

to the engaged troops. The aggressive pursuit of information is a marked characteristic of 

General Crouch’s command style, and a wide understanding of the locus of critical decisions 

was essential to his success. In none of this, except perhaps the control of the deployment down 

to delivery to the NATO AOR, was CINCUSAREUR outside the functions normally expected of 

a service component commander.

The novel features of the actions required of General Crouch involve his continued oversight 

of the force committed in Bosnia and, perhaps, the extent to which his headquarters was used by 

the joint commander and, for that matter, the Joint Staff to conduct planning involving aspects 

of Bosnia operations transcending the US land contribution. The need for the latter is less 

mysterious than it seems. Only the USAREUR staff, with its subordinate tactical headquarters, 

had the detailed technical knowledge to arrive at reasonable estimates of what a given force 

could accomplish. In this respect, the August 1995 briefing to the JCS and the work done 

afterward by Colonel Walters reaching back to the USAREUR planners, are most typical, and 

it is no more contrary to joint doctrine than air component commanders preparing air tasking 

orders. Planning must be done where technical expertise exists, and that will seldom be in joint 

headquarters. Planning should be done close to where it will be executed, and that normally 

means within the theater involved. What is critical in General Crouch’s case is the extent to 

which he actively sought to avoid bad decisions at higher levels by anticipating them and 

carefully explaining the calculus involved before they were badly made. Again, the visit to the 

Joint Staff in August 1995 was principally to justify anticipated doctrine for application and the 

methodology of work already done and to gain credibility for both. The extension of the task, 

with Colonel Walters working for General Estes, was no more than the J3 seeking technical 

expertise where it might best be found. Likewise, General Joulwan’s recalling Colonel Walters 

is understandable, as the CINCEUR likely did not want to be committed to any planning 

parameter by one of his colonels before he got a chance to think about it himself.

The question of exercise of national authority, carried out in the case of TF Eagle under 

the rubric of force protection and administrative command, is more contentious, but it is 

understandable if one accepts the assertion already made that alliances do not have armies; 

nations do. That is the basis of PDD-25’s clearest assertion, that the sole source of legitimacy 

for U.S. commanders originates from the U.S. Constitution, federal law and the Uniformed Code of 

Military Justice and flows from the President to the lowest U.S. commander in the field. On that simple 

statement is built the inherent obligation for national oversight of every aspect of military action 

within any alliance. Therefore, the proper question is not whether there will be such, but rather 

how it will be accomplished. By law, the original responsibility within the theater falls on the 

US theater commander. In the case of Bosnia, General Joulwan defined the limits of General 

Crouch’s reach over operational matters both by the authorities he assigned CINCUSAREUR 

and the structure he approved for the ISB/NSE. General Crouch admits to an expansive view 

of his authority under ADCON, justifying his actions from the standpoint that he was unwilling 

to leave matters such as force protection to chance. General Joulwan was always capable of 
70

drawing his subordinate back in so far as he was also prepared to accept the responsibility or 

delegate it elsewhere, once he, in effect, relieved his Army subordinate of it. In the event, these 

matters were resolved by the senior commanders involved based on their personal relationships 

and mutual estimates. One suspects this is most often the case.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3

1. Steven L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention 

(Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharp, 1999), 232, 338-339.

2. Admiral Smith was NATO CinC South, Commander in Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe. He was also 

Commander in Chief, US Navy Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR).

3. William B. Buchanan, et al., Institute for Defense Analyses, IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor--

Description and Lessons Learned (Planning and Deployment Phases), November 1996, I-5 to I-6. COL (Ret) Paul Sims, email to author. Colonel (Ret) Paul Sims, later Generals Crouch and Shinseki’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence 

at USAREUR, was J2 for JTF Provide Promise for most of 1995. 

4. Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, provides details of the various plans. [LTC Ron Miller], 

“Reflections of a Planner,” Annex H to HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: 

USAREUR Headquarters After Action Report (May 1997), Vol. 2, 147-172, outlines USAREUR planning efforts. 

Lieutenant Colonel Miller was assigned to the planning staff in the Office of the USAREUR Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Operations. He also was responsible for assembling a staff chronology of Bosnia Operations which he did in some 

detail. His account of planning at USAREUR, included in the USAREUR Headquarters After Action Report, is the 

most authoritative single source document found in USAREUR records and reports. The Chronology is available 

in the USAREUR History Office. Identity of the author confirmed by LTC (Ret) Miller.

5. Bildt, Peace Journey. 

6. Brian Urquhart, “Mission Impossible,” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 46, No. 18 (November 18, 1999), 

26-29.

7. The “dual key” required UN military commanders to obtain permission from the senior UN Balkan 

representative, UN Ambassador Akashi, prior to employing air support of their forces.

8. Bildt, Peace Journey, 64-65,93-96,104; Holbrooke, To End a War, 163-164, 187.

9. Ann Devroy and Eric Pianin, “Clinton Vetos GOP’s 7-Year Balanced Budget,” Washington Post, December 7, 

1995, A1; “Political Theater of the Absurd,” US News and World Report, Vol. 119, No. 21 (November, 27, 1995), 14.

10. Helen Dewar and Guy Bugliotta, “Senate Backs Troops to Bosnia; House Retreats on Fund Cutoff,” 

Washington Post, December 14, 1995, A1.

11. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 307-387; Bildt, Peace Journey, 92-119.

12. Particularly French premier Jacques Chirac; Bildt, Peace Journey, 60; Holbrooke, To End A War, 67, 70-71. For 

a more skeptical view, see Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 326, 342.

13. This is essentially Holbrooke’s interpretation. Holbrooke, To End A War, 65-66, 68.

14. Ibid., 65-68.

15. Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 323. Reference is drawn from extensive coverage of 

administration mixed signals on the front page of The New York Times on June 1, 1995, and June 5, 1995.

16. Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 347.
71

17. Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance; One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia (New York: W. W. Norton and 

Company, 1998) discusses Srbrenica by tracing the flight of a Bosniac family related to his wife into the pocket, and 

its misfortunes during the subsequent reduction and aftermath.

18. Holbrooke, To End a War, 70-71; Bildt, Peace Journey, 57-58, 60.

19. Bildt, Peace Journey, 76.

20. See particularly Carl Bildt, Ibid, 103; also, Burg and Shoup, War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 534-355.

21. The Washington (North Atlantic) Treaty may be found on line at http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/

treaty.htm. 

22. Department of State, Bureau of International Organizational Affairs, U.S. Department of State, February 22, 

1996, Clinton Administration Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations (PDD 25) [hereinafter, PDD-25]. Release 

is available at http://www.state.gov/www/issues/un_clinton_policy.html

23. The 1994 date is taken from Department of the Army, FM 100-8, The Army in Multinational Operations (24 

December 1997). A copy of the 1994 White Paper from the Executive Office was provided by Dr. William Gregor, 

US Army School of Advanced Military Studies.

24. NATO, Allied Forces Central Europe, Multinational Force Command Authorities Handbook: Proceedings of the 

Central Region-Chiefs of Army Staff (CR-CAST) Working Group on Command Authorities Required for a Multinational Force 

Commander (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1 September 1995). Mr. Jon Whitford of the USAREUR 

DCSOPS Staff has been my patient guide through this arcane business. The synthesis is my responsibility, however, 

not his.

25. Emphasis added. PDD 25.

26. Ibid.

27. Mr. Whitford informed the author that the position of the US Military Representative to NATO’s Military 

Committee, then Marine Corps Lieutenant General Mike Byron, was that PDD-25 did not govern. However, 

preexisting NATO agreements, specifically MC 36/2l, ACE Directive 80-20, and AAP-6, which did, all acknowledge 

the continuing link between the contributing nation and its forces. Mr. Jon Whitford, communication with the 

author.

28. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 148. 

29. General Crouch brought General Dan Petrosky, later his DCSOPS, a career aviator, to Europe to help him 

sort through the technical issues involved in the extraction operation. Comments by General Petrosky to the 

author.

30. The Southern European Task Force is a small brigade-sized organization then based on a single airborne 

infantry battalion (3d Battalion, 325th Infantry). It is located outside of Vincenza, near Venice.

31. According to Buchanan, et al., the French delegation to NATO tried to cut the SACEUR out of the chain of 

command between CINCSOUTH, Admiral Smith, and the North Atlantic Council. France had lost a recent battle to 

replace the American CINCSOUTH with a European. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor,

III-11. Holbrooke also addresses the conflict with the French. Holbrooke, To End a War, 328.

32. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, III-10. V Corps planners report beginning their 

part of this effort in August. Also [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 149-150.

33. Reference to the Korea example is common among the planners involved.

34. Author’s discussion with Colonel (Retired) Walters.
72

35. He thought it too detailed and the analysis too “tactical.” Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Peter Schifferle, 

Chief War Plans, ACofS, G3, V Corps, conducted at Campbell Barracks, Heidelberg, Germany, 16 February 1996, 

Interviewer: Major Richard Thurston, 90th Military History Detachment. Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Albert 

Bryant, Jr., Chief, Plans, ACofS, G3, V Corps, conducted at Campbell Barracks, Heidelberg, Germany, 16 February 

1996, Interviewer: Major Richard Thurston, 90th Military History Detachment. Transcripts provided to author by 

V Corps Historian, Dr. Charles Kirkpatrick.

36. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 150-151. 

37. Exercise Mountain Shield, 6 July-22 July 1995.

38. Task Force Lion:

TF LION

x

xx

TF

LION

JSOTF AOCC SPT

FORCE ENHANCEMENTS

(-)

ISB

(-)

(-)

(-)

FOB

ARFOR

TAB

x

SPT

TF FOR SPT

Office of the Commander in Chief, Briefing AUSA Breakfast, 11 October 1995.

39. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 138.

40. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,”149-150. 

41. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Staff Action Summary, SUBJECT: Bosnia-Herzegovina: 

USAREUR Actions, dated 9 June 95; with slides “Detailed Timeline.” Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Vic Robertson, 

e-mail to the author. LTC Robertson was assigned to develop the audit trail justifying the decisions and turn it into 

slides. Chronology provided to author in April 2000 by LTC Michael Bell, HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives 

Group.

42. Holbrooke, To End a War, 133-142; Carl Bildt, Peace Journey, 98-100.

43. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, II-11.

44. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 151.

45. HQ USAREUR, Deputy Chief of Staff for Resource Management, Briefing for Ms. Alice Maroni, Deputy 
73

Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), Cost Summary Operation Joint Endeavor, Operation Joint Guard, Operation 

Joint Forge, dated 10 February 1999, Slide, “Operational Joint Endeavor Year #1--9 months [FY ‘96].” Numbers are 

used here as a benchmark. It is not clear what precise costs were considered in the figure. Briefing provided author 

by Mr. John Kohler, DCSRM.

46. On 25 November. The DCSLOG had already expended $1.5 million to increase stocks, $0.8 million on 23 

October on his own responsibility, and $0.7 million on 18 November, on the CinC’s. HQ USAREUR, Deputy Chief 

of Staff for Logistics, MEMORANDUM FOR USAREUR ODCOPS-PLEX-FORCE DEVELOPMENT, ATTN: LTC 

MILLER, SUBJECT: Critical Events Summary for Operation Joint Endeavor (OJE), dated 20 November 1996. Memo 

is part of the supporting material for LTC Miller’s Operation Joint Endeavor (OJE), Critical Events Summary. See 

note 4.

47. From the perspective of the 1st Armored Division, the training process began in September with their 

arrival at Seventh ATC for their routine gunnery training cycle.

48. Kohler, End of Tour Interview.

49. This is a frequent comment from officers assigned to the headquarters at the time. Major General Larry 

Dodgen, then Colonel Dodgen, Chief of General Crouch’s Initiatives Group and one of the frequent insiders, 

admitted to the author somewhat wryly that he had planned leave for Thanksgiving week, a leave foreshortened 

by the initializing of the Dayton Accords. The USAREUR political advisor, Mr. Lange, told the author that while he 

was briefing that a settlement would be signed at Dayton, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence was reporting 

it would not happen.

50. The first Reserve Units for 3rd COSCOM arrived in Europe on Christmas Eve.

51. Each with its own attached cavalry squadron in addition to the normal brigade “slice.”

52. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, II-6, II-7. Wentz, et al., Lessons from Bosnia: The 

IFOR Experience, 36-51, 261-264.

53. The “redefinition” resulted from uncertainty about what forces to count as coming under the force cap.

54. HQ 1st Armored Division, TF Eagle After Action Report, 20 Dec 95-10 Nov 96, II-2 shows the task organization 

of MND-N. The extensive After Action Report is filed in the V Corps Historian’s Office.

55. Buchan et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, III-20-23, and VI-3--12, provides a somewhat 

tendentious analysis and argument for appointment of a JTF.

56. Holbrooke, To End A War, 220-221.

57. With regard to US forces, General Joulwan insists he was scrupulous in observing the US Army chain of 

command through General Crouch. General Joulwan to author.

58. A full description of internal V Corps command arrangements is in HQ V Corps, History Office, Operation 

Joint Endeavor, V Corps After Action Review: Central Region Operations. The report was prepared by Dr. Charles 

Kirkpatrick, the V Corps historian, and was obtained from the V Corps history office.

59. 10 US Code, Section 162.

60. Department of Defense, Joint Staff, Joint Pub 0-2, Unified Action Armed Forces (UNAAF) (24 February 1995), 

III-2

61. NATO has a different, more limited definition of OPCON:

The authority delegated to a commander to direct forces assigned so that the commander may 

accomplish specific missions or tasks which are usually limited by function, time or location; to 
74

deploy units concerned, and to retain or assign tactical control of those units. It does not include 

authority to assign separate employment of components of the units concerned. Neither does it, of 

itself, include administrative or logistic control. 

NATO, AAP-6 (V) modified version. [http://www.nato.int/docu/stanag/aap006/aap6.htm] Another NATO authority, 

Operational Command, which includes authority to reassign forces, more closely parallels US OPCON. It is the 

availability and nonuse of this authority, which exceeds that of OPCON as defined in PDD-25, that makes the case 

that the influence of PDD-25 was broader than literally asserted.

62. There was another point of view, that the US forces were coming into an area observing a successful ceasefire 

between parties and mutual agreement to withdrawal, and into an area already occupied by troops formerly part 

of UNPROR. In this reading, US security was overkill. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor,

III-22. 

63. Much of the discussion of this decision is confusing because the authority is asserted as an inherent 

responsibility of the service component commander under Title 10. In fact, as “executive agent,” CINCUSAREUR 

was executing an inherent responsibility of the combatant commander, as his agent. 

64. Information provided by Lieutenant General Dan Petrosky. Petrosky went to AFSOUTH to brief Admiral 

Smith on USAREUR’s plan for conduct of a tactical movement through Croatia to the Sava.

65. General Petrosky to author.

66. Correspondence with Lieutenant General Bill Carter and Major General Julian Burns. HQ USAREUR, 

Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After Action Report (May 

1997), Vol. I, 54-56, Vol. II, 158. Discussion with Lieutenant Colonel Andy Sandoy. LTC Sandoy, a member of the 

CinC’s Initiative Group, prepared the briefing General Crouch took to General Joulwan to obtain authority over 

force protection. NOTE: USAREUR AAR must be read with some care as doctrinal terminology on command 

responsibilities is not used with required precision. This reflects a general tendency on the Army staffs in Europe 

and can lead to some confusion.

67. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, III-22-23, VI-15.

68. Lieutenant General Sir Michael Walker, Commander Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps, 

“ARRC INTO ACTION,” NATO’S SIXTEEN NATIONS, Vol. 41, No. 2/96, 39. Walker says: “The circumstances 

into which the Corps [ARRC] was to deploy in support of the Peace Implementation Force (IFOR) saw a shift 

away from Peacekeeping, as defined in the operational charter of UNPROFOR, to Peace Implementation with 

enforcement. UNPROFOR’s mission was based on compliance by consent, impartiality on the part of UNPROFOR, 

and proportionate use of force only for self-defense. IFOR was to introduce the concept of enforcement which 

demanded that warring armies should perceive IFOR’s willingness to use force to compel compliance on an evenhanded basis.”

69. Ibid., 42-43. The situation was no different in Kosovo, where Sir Michael Jackson, who had been the first 

commander of Multilateral Division South East (the British framework division) in Bosnia, complained about 

“two military lawyers from two different countries debating the precise meaning of the definition of operational 

control.” Sir Michael Jackson, “Kosovo-One Year,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 145, No. 2, 13.

70. Lieutenant Colonel Tony Cucolo, Just a Footnote: TF 3-5 Goes to Bosnia, USAWC Personal Experience 

Monograph, US Army War College (n.d.), 11. Cucolo takes the position that is almost universal among 1st Division 

soldiers that “Operations in the Balkans drove home the point for me that regardless of the mission, there is no 

substitute for warfighting credibility.” Ibid., 8.

71. There was also some work to be done to extend ADCON support to such elements and a structure for 

application of military law. This was ultimately done on an area basis through USAREUR (Forward) and the 

National Support Element discussed below.

72. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 
75

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 116-118.

73. Exit Interview with Mr. David Lange, 10 June 1998. When Ambassador Blinken left Hungary, General 

Crouch, by then Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, took care to ensure that the Ambassador’s efforts on behalf of the 

Army were recognized with presentation of a suitable military award.

74. General Petrosky to author.

75. Mountain Shield Exercises are described in detail in HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, 

Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After Action Report (May 1997), Vol. II, 225, et seq.

76. Observation made to author by Colonel Greg Fontenot. On night march, see also Corpac, OPERATION 

JOINT ENDEAVOR, 10-11.

77. Corpac, OPERATION JOINT ENDEAVOR, 12. Corpac writes: “No amount of reports, negotiation with 

the issuing warehouses or pleas to higher headquarters, could get the needed equipment. The first two batteries 

[arrived?/deployed?] without the required equipment even though it was available in warehouses.” This may 

have been the result of the dislocation of the plans for the ISB rather than perversity on the part of logisticians.

78. Brigadier General Burwell B. Bell, Chief of Staff, Headquarters, USAREUR Forward at Taszar, Hungary, 

Oral History Interview conducted by Lieutenant Colonel Walter E. Kretchik, March 20 and 24, 1997. Transcript 

obtained from V Corps Command Historian. 4-5. [Hereinafter, Bell Interview.]

79. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. II, 239.

80. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR; From the Central Region to 

D + 60, Notebook, Senior Officer Training Program 17-19 April 1996, Chiemsee, Germany. What is of interest about 

this particular session is the attention given to “The Home Front.”

81. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Determined Effort: Implementation Forces (IFOR) 

Commitment to Peace.

82. Brigadier General Stan Cherrie, who ultimately went to Bosnia as ADC for the 1st Armored Division, relates 

that he first briefed a Bosnia peace implementation scheme to the AFSOUTH CINC in March 1994. The CINC at 

the time was Admiral Boorda. General Cherrie was just arriving on assignment as the American general on the 

ARRC staff.

83. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 156.

84. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor,III-15 to III-17. The three headquarters ended 

up using three different and variously incorrect sets of Time Phased Force Deployment Data (TPFDD).

85. A wonderful description of what deployment looked like at division level is in Lieutenant Colonel 

Michael D. Jones, The “Iron Dukes”; Supporting Operation Joint Endeavor, Term III, Course 455 Personal Experience 

Monograph, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA (22 May 1998). Colonel Jones had the misfortune of being 

assigned to create and run ab initio a division movement control center for the 1st Armored Division.

86. Enabling forces were units, principally communication and intelligence, assigned to the NATO headquarters 

(IFOR and ARRC) vice TF Eagle.

87. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor,IV-9, lists echelonment of USAREUR Campaign 

Plan 40105 but omits NATO enabling forces which were not part of TF Eagle. HQ USAREUR, Office of the 

Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 

157, identifies seven echelons in a slightly different fashion. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, 

Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR; From the Central Region to D + 60, Notebook, Senior Officer Training Program 17-19 

April 1996 contains a slide titled, “Operation Joint Endeavor, Planned Flow of Forces” that shows the modified 
76

force flow executed.

88. The 3rd Battalion, 325th Infantry remained in Bosnia securing the sector that ultimately went to the Russian 

Brigade until that unit arrived on station.

89. Choice of crossing site is explained in HQ, Engineer Brigade, 1st (US) Armored Division, AETV-THQ, 

Memorandum for Commanding General, 1st Armored Division, APOAE 09111, SUBJECT: DIVENG Commander’s 

Comments on Operation Joint Endeavor, dated 10 march 1997, in HQ 1st Armored Division, TF Eagle After Action 

Report, 20 Dec 95-10 Nov 96.

90. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, “Agreement on Military Aspects of the Peace Settlement.”

91. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 163-165.

92. Lange, Exit Interview, 10 June 1998.

93. An execute order arrived for the NATO Enabling Forces only. 

94. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 156.

95. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, IV-6. The IDA analysis concludes that the 

information flow between headquarters, to include holding to a common designation of C-days, had broken 

down.

96. [Miller], “Reflections of a Planner,” 157. Discussion with General Dodgen.

97. The rail strike was in France, but it isolated many of the oversized rail cars needed to move heavy equipment. 

The sabotage was in Germany and was unrelated to Bosnia, but it caused a significant blockage to the German rail 

net work.

98. COL Greg Fontenot to author.

99. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, Chapter IV.

100. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 165.

101. A fact acknowledged by After Action Reviews at every level.

102. Bell Interview, 9-12. Discussion with Colonel Greg Fontenot, Commander, 1st Brigade Combat Team. 

103. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR; From the Central 

Region to D + 60, Notebook, Senior Officer Training Program 17-19 April 1996, Slide, “Operation Joint Endeavor; 

ACCELERATED 2D BDE MOVEMENT.” General Joulwan told the author his broad concept called for a rapid 

concentric entry into Bosnia from all directions, hence the US approach from Hungary and Croatia, as well as that 

through Belgrade. General Joulwan also indicated he had the political goal in mind and said that the forces were 

escorted to the border by FRY forces.

104. Colonel Fontenot to the author.

105. Buchanan, et al., IDA Paper P-3210, Operation Joint Endeavor, 8. Chapter IV provides a detailed analysis of 

the deployment.

106. Jones, “Iron Dukes,” 29.

107. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 
77

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 126-128, 133.

108. Ibid., 268.

109. The original plan called for 13 camps (some records say 8), through 24 were built.

110. COL Maxie MacFarland, the V Corps G-2 and USAREUR (Forward) Force Protection Officer, was 

responsible for inspecting every unit that departed the ISB. Brigadier General Stan Cherrie, ADC of TF Eagle and 

Colonel Greg Fontenot, the 1st Brigade Commander, were already in Bosnia. They identified the operational cost 

involved in the trade-off. As General Cherrie put it succinctly, “There was a lot of daylight burning.” As a result 

of the Pause, and the requirements involved in bringing in the 2d Brigade simultaneously, Fontenot had an armor 

battalion withheld and did not receive his Forward Support Battalion until late February 1996. The latter appears 

to have been as much a result of the insertion of the 2d Brigade as the Pause, however.

111. General Abrams informed the author of his meeting with the managers of the German Rail System.

112. Lange, Oral History Interview, 8 May 1998.

113. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After 

Action Report (May 1997), Vol. I, 55-56.

114. Colonel Walters to author.

115. The similarity may be coincidental, though the author’s attention was drawn to PDD-25 when he found an 

extract defining OPCON in a “Smart Book” used by General Crouch as COMSFOR in 1997. The Smart Book is one 

of several put together by the CinC’s Initiative Group, located now in the USAREUR History Office.

116. General Crouch to the author. JCS took a hard line anytime a proposal was made for a US asset to replace 

an allied asset of the same quality. Alliance or no, Europeans and Americans always seem to believe the other guy 

is trying to take advantage.

117. See the response to General Wesley Clark’s dispatch of US forces to reinforce the French in Mitrovica, 

Kosovo. Roberto Suro, “American Troops in Kosovo Restricted to U.S. Sector,” Washington Post, March 1, 2000, A18. 

Department of Defense, Defense Link News, DoD News Briefing, Tuesday, February 29, 2000-2:11 p.m. EST, Presenter: 

Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. On line at [ http://www.defenselink.mi./news/ 

Feb2000/t02292000_t229asda.html ]

118. Bell Interview, 33-37.

119. A particularly apt turn of phrase I owe to Colonel Greg Fontenot.

79

CHAPTER 4

“NOW I HAVE THREE MASTERS”:

LANDCENT TO IFOR, FEBRUARY TO DECEMBER 1996

In February 1996, Task Force (TF) Eagle completed its deployment into Bosnia. General 

Crouch continued to be involved in national oversight of the committed US units while 

fulfilling his more general command responsibilities for forces remaining in the Central Region 

and deployed elsewhere. With regard to the Bosnia force, he devoted significant attention to 

maintaining the troops’ state of training, more generally sustaining the deployed units and 

preparing for their withdrawal at the end of the 1-year mission. He had provided for oversight 

and sustainment through the US Army Europe (USAREUR) (Forward) headquarters and the 

National Support Element (NSE). He supplemented these by providing for regular staff and 

frequent personal command visits. To maintain the tactical combat edge, he directed the 

creation of a deliberate system in Bosnia and in Hungary to support periodic crew and team 

skill training. He and his staffs paid continued attention to force protection and troop welfare, 

particularly in setting standards for base camp construction and troop posture outside the base 

camp, and also focused on trooper and family care throughout the year of separation. 

General Crouch also continued to work on bringing a measure of long-range stability to 

the Europe-based Army. He presented an updated USAREUR campaign plan to his senior 

commanders in early 1996, even while TF Eagle completed its deployment.1 The focus in 

1996 was to continue the course set in 1995. The 1996 plan was presented as a “sequel” to the 

original. The word “sequel” was used in its special doctrinal sense of an operation premised 

on and growing out of the one preceding. Briefings focused on what had been accomplished in 

1995 and what had been learned. Greater command attention was directed to strengthening 

noncommissioned officer (NCO) oversight of soldiers, particularly regarding predictability of 

schedule, consistent maintenance of standards, soldier accountability, and single-soldier quality 

of life. 

Of course, stabilizing the Army in Europe was more difficult in January 1996 than it had 

looked a year earlier. A major part of the command was now deployed forward. Residual 

force levels in Germany had been reduced while bringing deployed forces up to strength, but 

the external mission tempo remained high. Replacement units were coming into Europe to fill 

predeployment shortfalls or special needs in the deployed force and to backfill deployed units 

like maintenance, military police, and medical units that performed vital mission readiness or 

community support functions. Notably, in the revised campaign plan, the three circles used to 

indicate the three thrust lines of the USAREUR strategy changed from Stable Force, Trained and 

Ready, and Living Well to Operations, Trained and Ready, and Quality Communities. Three values 

filled the points of overlap--stability, adaptability (vice predictability), and efficiency. Perhaps 

the key conclusion drawn was that USAREUR was reshaping to become a “forward deployed 

contingency force with multiple requirements.” USAREUR was at an institutional watershed.2

General Crouch found the support of Army Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer 

invaluable, both in providing the support required and, more important, acting as a detached 

but sympathetic observer, able to provide perspective and encouragement while acting as a 

sounding board the Army commander in Europe could use to thrash out his ideas. All this was 

accomplished by frequent telephone calls, a medium often marked by misunderstanding. In 

this case, an existing foundation of mutual trust and confidence ensured mutual understanding. 

Crouch and Reimer had a long-standing personal relationship born when Crouch served as 

assistant division commander in the division commanded by Reimer some years before. The 
80

friendship between the Reimer and Crouch families had been sustained. Now that mutual trust, 

compared by General Crouch to that between Eisenhower and Marshall, sustained the Europebased Army and its commander in what were trying and often lonely days. Crouch recalls that 

he could talk through his intent and see how it resonated with the Chief of Staff. When it did 

not, Crouch knew it at once from Reimer’s reaction and he would reconsider. “There was a 

value,” he says, “to communicate frequently with someone you respect.”3

In February 1996, General Crouch assumed new responsibilities. He was appointed 

commander, Allied Land Forces Central Europe (COMLANDCENT). Allied Land Forces 

Central Europe (LANDCENT) was a NATO multinational headquarters located in Heidelberg, 

Germany, on the same compound with Headquarters, USAREUR, and Headquarters, V 

Corps. With the reorganization of NATO following the ending of the Cold War, LANDCENT 

replaced the old Headquarters Central Army Group (CENTAG).4 LANDCENT was a Principal 

Subordinate Command of NATO’s Allied Forces, Central Europe (AFCENT).5 Its commanders 

were supposed to be Dutch and German generals, in rotation. In 1996, in response to an earlier 

initiative by the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), General George Joulwan, the 

German Government waived its right to the next command rotation in favor of an American.6 

Although it was not announced publicly, General Crouch understood that this action 

was taken to provide for a possible future wherein LANDCENT would assume command of 

Implementation Force (IFOR), replacing Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) and the 

Allied Command Europe (ACE) Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) in Bosnia. For political reasons, 

he was forbidden to make this public, even to his staff, until the change was approved by the 

North Atlantic Council (NAC) in July, though the possibility must have occurred to more than 

one NATO officer. Denied the ability to use the NATO staff to prepare for this likelihood, 

General Crouch began to use the USAREUR staff to help him think through the requirements 

that would confront him if the Bosnia scenario came to pass. The periodic appearance in the 

international headquarters of USAREUR planners with odd questions must have indicated 

something was in the wind. For the most part, however, General Crouch relied for information 

on the American general in LANDCENT, then Brigadier General Reginal G. Clemmons; when 

Clemmons was later recalled to the United States to attend a course, Crouch relied on the future 

LANDCENT Chief of Staff, Major General (UK) K. J. Drewienkiewicz. This enabled Crouch 

to plan for converting what was a static NATO planning and training headquarters into a 

deployable operational instrument. When asked later about the significance of the change, 

General Crouch observed, “I went from having two bosses (CINCEUR and Army Chief of Staff) 

to three.” 7 That two of these were the same person, General Joulwan, CINCEUR and SACEUR, 

did not always reduce the confusion since General Joulwan worked for the US President and 

Secretary of Defense in one manifestation and the NAC in the other.8 LANDCENT deployed 

in October 1996. It replaced AFSOUTH as the operational (IFOR) headquarters on 7 November 

and absorbed the land component role of the ARRC on the 20th. Thereafter, General Crouch 

combined the US service component responsibility for TF Eagle as Commander in Chief, 

USAREUR, with NATO operational control (OPCON) within the theater of operations, thus 

simplifying some of the crosscurrents in the US command. For the NATO force, the change 

combined two operational-level headquarters, one US-dominated and one essentially British. 

These were to be replaced by a single, carefully integrated theater headquarters.

One of the first USAREUR tasks to be undertaken in early 1996 was to plan for the recovery 

of US forces deployed to Bosnia. This process began in Heidelberg and Hungary even as the 

deployment went forward. In January 1996, it was understood that the Bosnia mission would be 

completed within 1 year of the December transfer of authority (TOA) in accordance with what 

seemed to be unambiguous public declarations from the President and Secretary of Defense.9

When that assumption began to be questioned, recovery planning had to accommodate the 
81

consequences of the change for a number of related assumptions having to do with unit rotation 

and sourcing, planned force restructuring, and Presidential commitments to the soldiers of TF 

Eagle. 

When TF Eagle was deployed to Bosnia, the Army Chief of Staff and General Crouch agreed 

that, given the size of the force and fixed duration of the deployment, USAREUR would bear the 

principal burden for the Army.10 USAREUR would request only those additional forces, largely 

from the Reserve Components, essential for the Bosnia mission and the continued operation of 

the USAREUR base at an acceptable quality of life.11 The decision on a 1-year fixed deployment 

also implied that US national authorities would accept the strategic implications of an extended 

recovery period for the 1st Armored Division once back in the Central Region. This recovery 

period, set at 8 months, provided for a unit retraining program, paced in part by the limited 

availability of collective training facilities in Germany, to restore battalion, brigade, and division 

combat teams to full collective combat readiness. However it was spun in the press, the 1st 

Armored Division, and indeed V Corps, were not likely to be available for deployment to an 

out-of-sector hotspot like the Middle East for some time. 

The 1-year fixed commitment for TF Eagle also led to a number of USAREUR initiatives to 

manage the deployed force and prepare for its return. With regard to the deployed force itself, 

it was the CINCUSAREUR’s intention early on to restructure TF Eagle within Bosnia once the 

separation of the contending armies was completed successfully after D+120 (20 April 1996). 

USAREUR planned to bring out some of the more expensive and less flexible heavy combat 

forces and replace them with lighter, more dispersible, and more economical forces such as 

MPs with High-Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs). Heavy units had been 

favored as a deterrent at the outset of the mission and as a troop protection measure in face of 

widespread mining. Initially, TF Eagle patrolling was limited largely to the Zone of Separation 

(ZOS). Once the faction armies returned to their cantonments and began demobilization, it 

was desirable to extend the patrol areas throughout the entire area of responsibility (AOR), 

a requirement for which the lighter wheeled vehicles were more suited.12 Moreover, the MP 

battalions brought into the US brigade combat teams had more vehicles than the heavy units 

they replaced. As it developed, from July to mid-September, these troops represented a pure 

addition of capability since the departing units were retained in country through the Bosnian 

national elections.13

To sustain force morale, welfare, and combat skills during the year-long deployment, 

General Abrams made arrangements, called “Fighter Maintenance,” for rotating TF Eagle line 

companies (one armor and one infantry company per rotation) through the intermediate staging 

base (ISB) in Hungary for personal recovery, rest, and crew retraining to restore perishable 

combat skills. A training cycle was established for deployed troops that included in-country 

foundation training; movement to Hungary; rest; refitting; and live-fire training at Taborfalva 

Range, rented from the Hungarian Government.14 The program included a pass program within 

Hungary for TF Eagle soldiers. This training program is notable as a manifestation of how the 

Army service component carried out its responsibility to maintain the standard of training and 

disciplined performance of the deployed force simultaneously with its operational employment 

by the NATO commanders. A record of a visit General Crouch made to TF Eagle in April 

1996 further reinforces this view of the service component commander’s responsibilities.15

During the visit, the CINCUSAREUR visited five base camps and five 1st Armored Division 

battalions. The aide-mémoire prepared following the visit addresses in detail various tactical 

and economic shortfalls observed and recommendations for improvement. In short, the senior 

Army commander did not, and could not, waive his responsibility for seeing to the tactical 

and administrative efficiency of the deployed force simply because it had been placed under 

operational command of others.
82

This degree of oversight had to be managed tactfully because it could be, and sometimes was, 

perceived to be a national and service intrusion into operational matters. It also unquestionably 

involved supervision of training and disciplinary concerns for which the national service 

component commander could argue he retained responsibility, subject always to disapproval 

by the US theater commander, who also happened to be the SACEUR.16 It did provide for troop 

and unit sustainment through a period intermediate to the focus on real-time execution by the 

tactical commander and the long view of the strategist. It also meant that US tactical commanders 

had to balance their time and resources against the independent requirements of two separate 

chains of command. This balancing exchanged a degree of control over forces available day to 

day for mission accomplishment in return for increased tactical capability over the long haul. 

This is a trade-off normally made by any commander engaged in sustained operations who 

is unwilling or unable simply to expend his units. What differed here, because of the NATO 

setting, is that two different chains of command with often differing priorities were setting the 

standards the local commander had to achieve. This could, on occasion, be uncomfortable, 

particularly in the early days when so much remained to be done--base camps built, faction 

forces separated, and populations sustained to the level that humanity demanded and military 

operations without civilian interference required. Viewed from the NATO command level, 

these US policies differed only in quality, not kind, from the execution of various responsibilities 

reserved by the several national authorities to maintain the health of their commands in theater. 

Force protection, troop and unit training and rotation, and leave policies are only among the 

most evident. Obviously, because these were separate from the parallel interests of the NATO 

operational commanders, managing this ambitious force sustainment program (of which force 

protection measures were but a part) depended largely on making the mission requirements in 

Bosnia routine once the faction forces had been separated. What was difficult at the start became 

more manageable as time went on, as operations became routine, and as the theater matured. 

Organizational changes then removed the source of the difficulty, at least for US commanders, 

by joining national and operational command in a single authority. 

USAREUR initiated a TF Eagle withdrawal plan in early 1996. It provided for either a 

deliberate or a more hasty unit retrograde movement to the Central Region. The plan would 

pull units out of Bosnia, move them through a forward staging base at Slavonski Brod, Croatia, 

and then into the ISB at Tazar for individual medical examination, recovery, and restoration 

of equipment, and individual and crew training before the unit’s return to its home station.17

In keeping with the general emphasis on improving single soldier quality of life and restoring 

unit accountability in the barracks, General Crouch focused his limited USAREUR construction 

resources on renovating deteriorating troop billets vacated by deployed soldiers. His goal was 

to have a substantial number of single soldier rooms upgraded by the anticipated date of return. 

By organizing the return process in this fashion, troops could on return be sent on block leave 

for “family maintenance,” as it was called. Afterward, the unit would pass through a deliberate 

program of increasingly challenging unit training before being declared combat ready and 

available for redeployment. Both troops and families received reunion training to facilitate the 

reentry of deployed soldiers into their family environment.

According to Lieutenant General Dan Petrosky, then USAREUR Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Operations (DCSOPS), the basic framework of mission assumptions changed suddenly during 

the first week of April 1996. Only then was USAREUR informed that some forces would remain 

in Bosnia after the 20 December anniversary of deployment, though the mission of these forces 

was not clear and the required force size even less so.18 What’s more, US and NATO headquarters 

were forbidden to plan for replacing IFOR since the official pre-US general election policy, no 

less that of the NAC, was that US and NATO troops would be withdrawn after 1 year--period! 

The President’s promise to the troops of TF Eagle that they would be home in a year meant that 
83

soldiers currently in Bosnia would have to be replaced starting around October 1996 if all were 

to be back in the Central Region by the December deadline. This Presidential commitment was 

deemed not to have changed. 

The answer settled on by Generals Crouch and Petrosky was to employ a covering force, the 

doctrinal procedure providing for a unit’s withdrawal from contact.19 USAREUR would send 

in a new division headquarters, Monty Meigs’ 1st Infantry Division’s, with a single brigade 

combat team to cover the withdrawal of the 1st Armored Division (minus) from its zone in 

Bosnia.20 This new organization could then be the basis of a follow-on force should NATO 

and, more particularly, the US Government authorize one. Alternatively, it could follow the 

1st Armored Division out of Bosnia if the decision was made to end the mission, more or less 

as originally announced. General Joulwan briefed this solution for approval by the NAC in 

July as the military way to overcome the difficulty imposed by the effects of the timing of the 

US general election. The initial US reaction was to insist on using a term other than “covering 

force” because of possible negative connotations that might be drawn by nonmilitary audiences. 

Joulwan insisted on the term because it was one that would be understood by the soldiers who 

had to execute the mission.21 At the same time planning for a covering force was going on, 

“exploration” began, if not planning, to determine how a Bosnia requirement of indefinite 

duration could be sustained.

Back in the Central Region, with the extension of the Bosnia mission, USAREUR and the 

Department of the Army had to develop a unit rotation plan. For the immediate future, the 

division headquarters involved would be left on station for about a year to provide some 

continuity. The 1st Armored Division headquarters would succeed the 1st Infantry Division 

in October 1997. Beginning with the covering force rotation, brigade combat teams (now only 

one brigade at a time) and their battalions would rotate through Bosnia for shorter periods 

whose duration would be calculated in consonance with predictable high threat or manpower 

intensive events like Bosnian elections. Shorter unit deployments would reduce the erosion 

of technical and tactical skills and the corresponding sustainment and retraining costs. As 

early as the introduction of the “restructuring” forces in the summer of 1996, it had become the 

norm to schedule unit replacements with strategically timed overlaps in order to manipulate 

the force caps upward temporarily in politically acceptable ways.22 To provide some relief for 

the limited number of USAREUR maneuver units, Continental United States (CONUS)-based 

battalions began to serve Bosnia rotations in March 1997 when Meigs’ 3d Brigade was joined by 

the CONUS-based 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry from Fort Riley, Kansas.23

USAREUR, with its truncated division structure, was running out of infantry battalions. 

According to the Joint Guard (20 December 1997 to 20 June 1998) After Action Report, during the 3 

years 1995 to 1998, one Europe-based unit had served three Balkan deployments (Bosnia and 

Macedonia). Fifty-three percent of 1st Armored Division soldiers sent to Bosnia in October 1997 

had served an earlier 6-month, or 1-year Balkan tour.24 In developing the requirement for the US 

Stabilization Force (SFOR) that was to be in place in March 1997, General Crouch indicated that 

his preferred solution was, in fact, to obtain a CONUS-based cavalry regiment.25 This did not 

work out for March 1997, but that summer the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment (Light), with two 

of its squadrons reinforced by a USAREUR-based infantry battalion, assumed the Bosnia brigade 

combat team mission. Finally, as the 18-month Operation Joint Guard mission (December 1996 

to June 1998) advanced and the stability of the military situation became increasingly evident, 

US forces started to become progressively lighter, with a number of HMMWVs substituting for 

some of the organic heavier armored systems.26

The heart of the US covering force was the 2d Brigade Combat Team of Monty Meigs’ 1st 

Infantry Division. Colonel Michael Thompson commanded the brigade. Assigned maneuver 

units were the two MP battalions deployed earlier as part of the summer US force restructuring 
84

initiative and two divisional heavy infantry battalions--the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry, and 1st 

Battalion, 26th Infantry (Blue Spaders). As Commander, TF Eagle, Meigs also commanded 

an aviation brigade task force, three artillery battalions, two heavy engineer battalions, and 

assorted support units.

General Crouch, who was by then preparing to assume NATO operational command 

in Bosnia, instructed his USAREUR planners to develop a follow-on US base force of three 

maneuver battalions and an aviation brigade. The aviation brigade, with attached companies of 

the US 10th Mountain Division, provided the core of a Land Component Commander’s Reserve 

(LCCR).27 Colonel Donald G. Goff, then chief of plans at USAREUR, noted later that General 

Crouch’s desire for the third US heavy battalion, which also related to the desire for an operational 

reserve, reflected both an assessment of the potential threat and of the comparative capabilities 

of allied units.28 Allied units tended to be lighter and less combat capable than nominal US 

equivalents.29 Goff also said that to meet force cap restrictions with this robust combat force, 

some of the TF Eagle support structure had to be moved across the Sava to Slavonski Brod 

where it would not count against the in-country cap. Meigs’ division, of course, also provided 

the NATO framework Multinational Division–North (MND-N) headquarters during the US 

covering force period and the first US SFOR rotation.30 Meigs replaced Major General William 

Nash both as Commander, TF Eagle (US), and Commander, MND-N (NATO). 

As the mission stretched out, lines of communication (LOCs) from Germany to Bosnia became 

more efficient. Support to TF Eagle became routinized as systems were established and longterm agreements entered into with countries along the way. More support could be provided 

directly from the Central Region. The US presence in Hungary could also be reduced and the 

USAREUR (Forward) headquarters closed down, permitting the V Corps commander to return 

to his routine duties in the Central Region. A reduced NSE remained in place.31 TF Eagle could 

be linked with its parent headquarters electronically with routine video teleconferencing and email. Much of the communications infrastructure supporting NATO forces could be converted 

to contract and the 5th Signal Command could recover its units to home station, thus restoring 

a large measure of theater readiness. The US footprint in Hungary began to shrink, as did the 

fixed-base structure in the MND-N AOR in Bosnia. As US forces withdrew to be replaced by the 

smaller covering force, the extensive system of small base camps set up in the winter and spring 

had to be “harvested.”32 That is, they had to be closed in a systematic and responsible way to 

recover what was reusable and thereby avoid future costs for the continuing Bosnia support 

mission. To accomplish this, additional construction engineers, particularly Navy Seabees 

and Air Force Red Horse squadrons, were brought in with the summer force restructuring in 

exchange for Army combat engineers. The July-September changeover involved in restructuring 

was used to shake out the USAREUR infrastructure through which the covering force and the 

withdrawing 1st Armored Division would move in the fall. While all this went on, General 

Crouch was engaged increasingly as COMLANDCENT.

The Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE) chronology titled, “The 

Evolution of NATO and ACE 1996,” states for 24 July that year, “The NAC agrees that an 

HQ based on HQ LANDCENT replace HQ IFOR and HQ ARRC later in the year” [Emphasis 

added.].33 The choice of words is revealing and important. It was not LANDCENT that would 

replace Headquarters IFOR and the ARRC to serve as the NATO headquarters in Bosnia during 

the period of withdrawal and/or successive operations into 1997. It was a headquarters based 

on Headquarters LANDCENT. The NATO headquarters General Crouch took command of 

in February 1996 was intended, as the AFCENT land component, to prepare forces for the 

NATO Article Five mission, defense of the NATO homeland, and to coordinate various NATO 

Partnership for Peace (PfP) activities for its higher headquarters. It was not an organization 

trained or well-disposed to deploy to conduct daily round-the-clock operations in a distant and 
85

exotic theater. General Crouch, with a good bit of direct attention from General Joulwan, had 

to form a new headquarters team on the standing structure, train it, and deploy it to Bosnia, 

within, as it happened, about 90 days. Like the covering force, LANDCENT had no idea what 

the duration of its mission was to be.

Major General John Drewienkiewicz (known as DaZed), the British LANDCENT Chief of 

Staff, summed up the challenges in the briefing slide, “Why I Lie Awake at Night”:

We are changing from a small cohesive HQ that does business using paper over days and weeks 

to a large fully automated HQ using e-mail--by the way, our augmentees (490 of 670) may or may 

not have seen a computer before.

We are taking over from 2 dissimilar HQ that don’t really like each other, and have different views 

of how things should be done.

To make all this work needs money, which is being controlled much more stringently than when 

the operation was set up; and the control is by a fourth party which is still working on a peacetime 

committee-driven decisionmaking process.34

Drewienkiewicz believes he was the only senior officer in the headquarters other than 

General Crouch who had actually visited Bosnia when the mission was assigned. He reflects 

that General Crouch had had one opportunity to assess the magnitude of the problem that 

faced him in reconfiguring LANDCENT. The headquarters had participated in a PfP command 

post exercise in February-March 1996 with Ace Mobile Force Land (AMFL), another NATO 

headquarters in Heidelberg. This at least gave General Crouch insight into the technical 

shortcomings in his new command and particularly into the issue of what the headquarters 

support battalion should look like for a deployment.35

Manning a NATO headquarters is a political as well as a military act. Consideration must 

be given the national contribution to the subordinate force, the national military character (or 

estimated general level of professionalism), and the political posture of the nations engaged with 

regard to the particular task at hand. The SACEUR’s intention was to replace two headquarters 

that appeared to be dominated by two nations, the United States (IFOR) and Britain (ARRC), 

with a single fully integrated headquarters, in which the largest number of participating nations 

might take part.36 Much of the actual spadework, especially filling key positions, could be done 

only by the SACEUR at SHAPE and NATO headquarters, although General Drewienkiewicz 

has observed that that did not provide General Crouch much cover from the importunings of 

the several national military staffs and individuals.37 The headquarters also required a certain 

number of supporting units for which sponsoring nations had to be found. A notable difficulty 

arose over the manning of an alliance human intelligence (HUMINT) battalion for which no 

lead nation stepped forward. Human intelligence was particularly important in an environment 

where the pathology of an organized crowd or a mafia-like cabal weighed more heavily than an 

enemy table of organization and equipment (TOE).

By General Crouch’s calculus, he was adding 650 new personnel (80 percent) from 25 nations 

to a staff that would total only 813 at the end while, at the same time, trying to reorient the staff to 

a new and challenging mission. General Drewienkiewicz reckons the headquarters kept about 

one-third of its personnel, observing that, notwithstanding the deployment order, it continued 

to be tasked to provide individual augmentees to other headquarters, thereby suffering 

additional losses. He also recalls that many senior officers declined to go south and found other 

employment. Moreover, separate national rules for overseas deployment also compounded the 

problem. Of one national contingent of 99 predeployment officers, only 44 were available after 

the order was received. Of these, an additional 11, all willing on their own to deploy, were lost 

due to national medical screening during the headquarters’ intense predeployment training 
86

COUNTRY NUMBER OF 

PERSONNEL

Portugal 5

France 96

Netherlands 82

Canada 13

Albania 1

Denmark 18

Sweden 2

Belgium 50

Turkey 10

Latvia 1

Spain 2

Austria 1

Germany 168

Greece 4

Poland 2

United States 190

Finland 1

United Kingdom 113

Hungary 1

Romania 2

Italy 36

Norway 9

Malaysia 2

Estonia 2

Ukraine 2

New LANDCENT Demographics

AUSA Briefing, LANDCENT TO IFOR TRANSITION

14 May ’97

Crouch Papers, USAREUR History Office

program.38 Another set of indicative statistics provided by Drewienkiewicz: of 17 predeployment 

general officers, only 6 went south; of 44 colonels, only 20 made the trip.39 According to General 

Joulwan, forming the new command team, once manned, depended largely on the personal 

demeanor, integrity, and character of the LANDCENT Commander himself.40 It is as true today 

as in Eisenhower’s time that mutual trust and confidence are essential lubricants to overcome 

the friction inherent in an integrated multinational headquarters. Both trust and confidence 

begin with the commander. General Crouch was well-suited for the task. 

Typical of alliance headquarters, the new organization was top-heavy in general officers 

at the beginning. The United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands 

were the principal contributors to the reformed headquarters. There would be three deputy 

IFOR commanders--a French Deputy Commander (DCOM), a British Deputy Commander 

for Operations (DCOMOPS), and a German Deputy Commander for Logistics (DCOMLOG). 

As already indicated, the chief of staff was British. This would change in the spring of the 

following year when Germany, in the process of resuming full membership in the European 
87

family of nations, decided to send a combat brigade to the Balkans. In light of their increased 

participation, they demanded and received the Chief of Staff billet, much to General Crouch’s 

dismay at the loss of an officer upon whose judgment and energy he had come to rely. Moreover, 

with commitment of the combat brigade, the Germans withdrew the first class logistics unit they 

had provided heretofore, leaving another problem for the LANDCENT commander to solve. 

General Drewienkiewicz went to Zagreb and took command of the SFOR Support Command.

The Chief of Staff had an Italian deputy. With one exception, all the staff directors were 

general officers. The United States would hold overall command plus the intelligence and 

operations billets, and would assume command of the Combined Joint Special Operations 

Task Force (replacing a British commander under IFOR). Typical of the perversity of US 

joint assignment policies, the intelligence officer assigned to this essentially land theater, 

requiring high quality HUMINT products, was an Air Force officer better adapted for technical 

intelligence. This would be a handicap during the spring campaign when the threat proved to be 

organized groups of returnees and resisting mobs. Assembling and disseminating intelligence 

was a particularly important function of the SFOR headquarters both because of the nature of 

the problem, where opposition networks extended throughout and beyond the boundaries of 

Bosnia, and because of the way divisional boundaries were drawn to be discontinuous with the 

Entities and factions.41 Notably, General Crouch took with him his own USAREUR Staff Judge 

Advocate, Colonel Mack Squires, and his USAREUR Political Adviser, Dave Lange. He also 

appointed a US colonel, Don Brunner, to act as his headquarters commandant. Like USAREUR 

staff officers, General Drewienkiewicz observed that some international officers found it 

disappointing that rank and formal position alone were not sufficient to win the commander’s 

immediate trust and confidence. However, he says, once you had demonstrated your loyalty to 

the mission and ability to get things accomplished, access and authority followed. 

To fill the key assignment as his principal operations staff officer (CJ3), General Crouch drew 

on the services of then US Major General Jack Nix. Nix had been commander of the USAREUR 

Southern European Task Force (SETAF) during the Mountain Shield training for the complex 

mission to withdraw the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) from the threatened UN Safe 

Areas. Nix was, he says, unenthusiastic about the mission and went to Bosnia largely out of 

personal loyalty to General Crouch built up during command of SETAF.42 A rump LANDCENT 

headquarters, commanded by Crouch’s original Dutch deputy commander, remained in 

Heidelberg throughout the deployment to conduct routine NATO business, which did not go 

away. For the most part, General Crouch operated with an inner circle of key advisers who 

had his trust: Lieutenant General Roderick Cordy-Simpson, his British Deputy for Operations; 

Drewienkiewicz; Nix; and, once she arrived, Miss Mette Nielsen, the Danish NATO Political 

Adviser, who impressed everyone on the SFOR staff with her capability, energy, and dedication. 

It is important to observe again that presence in this inner circle was merited not so much by 

position or nationality (though command of the English language seems to have been essential), 

but by the confidence the commander acquired in the capability and loyalty of the staff officer. 

When a member rotated, there was no guarantee the successor would find himself as involved 

in important matters as was his predecessor.

To further complicate the situation created by the new mission and headquarters 

restructuring, the orders to prepare for deployment to Bosnia were made public just as the 

second half of the existing LANDCENT staff was about to go on its annual August recess.43

This timing also affected the ability to coordinate funding for the various actions necessary to 

prepare the deploying headquarters. Authority to expend funds arrived only upon receipt of 

the NATO ACTWARN on 24 July, a week before NATO Headquarters in Brussels went on its 

annual summer leave.

General Crouch had to defer a training program for the headquarters until late August 
88

because of the personnel turmoil ensuing within the headquarters remanning. The situation 

called for a program that would train a dramatically new and incomplete staff, in both routine 

and conceptual skills, in time to deploy the organization to Bosnia in late October, prepared 

to conduct operations on arrival. Not surprisingly, the training program was based on the 

USAREUR Eight-Step Model, and it demanded some decentralization in execution, wherein the 

leaders of the various staff modules trained their individual teams concurrently. Senior leaders 

were drilled on media relations, and General Crouch arranged to send as many as possible to 

Sarajevo for 4-day familiarization visits. He sent General Nix (and General Meigs) into Bosnia a 

month early so they might learn by observing their predecessors on the job--the so-called “right 

seat ride”--a practice that became common in key leader transitions. 

To help prepare the new allied headquarters, Crouch called on the US Army Battle Command 

Training Program, Team Delta, led by Colonel William Pennypacker and advised by General 

(USA, Retired) James J. Lindsay.44 Lindsay was a distinguished US paratroop commander 

who completed his Army career forming the US Joint Special Operations Command during 

the Reagan Administration. Pennypacker had just arrived at Team Delta in August when 

the LANDCENT mission was assigned. In 1990-91, Pennypacker had been one of General H. 

Norman Schwarzkopf’s “Jedi Knights,” ground force planners for Operation DESERT STORM. 

Now, he was summarily put on a plane to Europe to prepare an exercise, on short notice, to 

train the shifting LANDCENT staff. One of Pennypacker’s observations later was that most of 

the folks he talked to at LANDCENT that first week in August 1996 were no longer present in 

October when he returned with his team to conduct the two exercises that were the graduation 

drills for the new command team. Moreover, General Drewienkiewicz estimates that no more 

than 60 percent of the deploying headquarters was present either, those being the 28 percent that 

stayed on and the other 32 percent being some of the new arrivals. Team Delta administered 

the exercises for AFCENT, the NATO Major Subordinate Command to which LANDCENT 

was normally subordinate. Major General John Sylvester, an American general officer recently 

assigned to the ARRC in Bosnia but now the AFCENT Director of Operations, acted as deputy 

exercise director. Sylvester would subsequently serve, in turn, as Assistant Chief of Staff for 

Operations of SFOR under Generals Shinseki and Meigs. 

The NATO Activation Request was issued to LANDCENT on 19 August 1996. A month 

later (18 September) the Activation Order followed. Deployment began on 22 October. The 

headquarters deployed in three echelons. General Crouch assumed the IFOR mission on 7 

November, and the ARRC mission was absorbed on 20 November.

IFOR headquarters in Sarajevo was located in a complex known as the Residency near the 

Office of the High Representative, the United States’ Embassy, and the Zetra Olympic Stadium 

in the hills above old Sarajevo. General Walker had located his ARRC headquarters in a hotel 

and hot springs complex 7 miles across town in the suburb of Ilidza, close to the airport (though 

separated by a small river). General Crouch and LANDCENT conducted their reliefs of the two 

headquarters by setting up parallel staffs on site, following operations for a time, then assuming 

control at TOA. AFSOUTH and the ARRC left some key personnel in place until the December 

transition from IFOR to SFOR. The whole LANDCENT headquarters, initially divided on the 

two sites, eventually reassembled in the Ilidza compound, even in the building reputedly the 

site of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand’s final night on earth in July 1914.45 The hotel 

had seen much ill usage since then. Once it was assembled as a single headquarters, General 

Crouch could reduce the headquarters complement, which he did, almost by half by May 1997.46

According to General Drewienkiewicz, this process of staff reduction began almost at once as 

the holiday period of 1996-97 approached.

At first, General Crouch established his relieving headquarters at Ilidza outside the 

main buildings in large military trucks called expando-vans. These had been retained by 
89

LANDCENT, contrary to NATO guidance, since the old CENTAG days.47 Their availability 

at LANDCENT allowed continuity of operations at Ilidza. While the ARRC removed all of its 

gear for its return to Germany, LANDCENT obtained a new suite of equipment, some building 

renovation was accomplished, and a local area computer network was installed in the old hotel. 

The accommodations at Ilidza, though better than those in the field sites, were crowded and 

Spartan, and the large park was soon filled with temporary buildings constructed from cormex 

(like sea-land) containers, stacked one on the other like Lego blocks, to house various staff and 

national support elements. Eventually a Bosnian contractor undertook to operate the hotel for 

NATO, and in 1999 some much-needed renovations were undertaken. Obviously, turning 

hotels built in the late 19th century into marvels of secure electronic connectivity involved no 

small effort, considerable patience, and doubtless considerable expense for which money had to 

be found. SFOR headquarters would remain at Ilidza until the summer of 2000, when it moved 

to a specially built complex at Butmir, another small suburb further out of town near the eastern 

end of the Sarajevo airport runway. General Drewienkiewicz recalls that one drawback from 

moving into Ilidza from the Residency was that it took the Commander, IFOR (COMIFOR) and 

his principal staff officers out of the area in which the High Representative and the Contact 

Group diplomats worked. Traveling back and forth became time-consuming, and officers lost 

the easy relations with civilian counterparts that proximity brings.

In Bosnia, by June 1996, the key military tasks of the General Framework Agreement had 

been accomplished. The faction armies were separated and demobilizing. Troops were in 

barracks and heavy weapons generally in holding areas, though it was some time before weapon 

inventories would match consistently. Moreover, there were unquestionably considerable 

miscellaneous weapons and ammunition abroad in the population after the war years. On the 

civil side, progress in implementation was glacial, a consequence both of significant faction 

intransigence and of the start-up time required by the multitude of independent and sometimes 

competing civilian implementation authorities to get themselves organized, starting as they did 

from a zero base. At a conference in Florence that June, France raised the issue of sustaining the 

international intervention through a 2-year stabilization period to follow the first year.48 Full 

implementation was seen to depend upon the upcoming September 14th central (one can hardly 

call it national) government and Entity elections. These would establish state and Entity political 

institutions, legitimated by ballot, to assume responsibility for long-term implementation of the 

Dayton Accords. Elsewhere, on 25 June a bomb went off at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and 

suddenly General Crouch’s insistence on strict force protection measures took on greater point 

in the arguments made by US administration officials defending the Bosnia commitment to a 

critical Congress.49

While LANDCENT prepared for its Bosnia mission, in August and September 1996, a new 

form of conflict arose in the 1,063-kilometer-long ZOS, particularly in the Zvornik region of 

the eastern Republika Srpska (RS). Organized Bosniac refugees returning to territory now part 

of the RS were confronted by hostile Serbs, and the international community was caught in 

the middle. The result was imposition of a system to coordinate organized returns while 

maintaining the principle that the right of individual return was to be unhindered.50 The 

difficulty was that Serbs saw the Bosniac returns as Muslim attempts to win control of strategic 

territory that the Bosniacs had not won militarily, control the Serbs were prepared to contest. 

For their part, the Serbs sought to protect their territory with a solid “biological line”51 along the 

Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) that separated the Republika Srpska from the Federation. The 

international community refused to accept such a validation of wartime ethnic cleansing. For 

the international community, then, refugee returns were a sine qua non for the entire Dayton 

settlement. The international community meant to support them, hopefully consistent with the 

maintenance of good order.
90

However, while the international community insisted that local security for refugees was a 

responsibility for local Entity police, in this case in the RS, when returns were targeted for terrain 

in the ZOS, they entered a domain where IFOR had a primary obligation to ensure stability. 

When local police failed to maintain order, IFOR had to fill in. Later on, the International Police 

Task Force (IPTF) would develop the means to sanction police officials who failed in their 

duties. But in the fall of 1996, the international power of sanction was limited in practice largely 

to economic suasion and, until there was an elected structure of government at Entity and local 

levels, it was difficult indeed to find suitable points to apply what pressure there was. The 

international community, IFOR included, was finding its way a step at a time.

Central- and Entity-level elections were held on 14 September 1996. Although there was 

widespread malfeasance, the High Representative and the Organization for Security and 

Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) decided to live with the results, in High Representative Carl 

Bildt’s view because even without the corruption it was unlikely that there would have been 

a different outcome.52 To the dismay of the international community, the wartime hardliners 

came out of the election in control of the two Entities and the Tri-Presidency. Politics would 

continue to be conducted as war by other means even under the legitimacy of the ballot. 

On the 25th and 26th of September, at an “informal” NATO defense ministerial meeting 

in Bergan, Norway, there was discussion of a NATO follow-on force to succeed IFOR. On 3 

October, the US Secretary of Defense authorized the deployment of the covering force. On 5

October, the Bosnian presidency was inaugurated, all but Serb Tri-President Krajisnik, who 

refused to attend.53 On the 7th, redeployment of the 1st Armored Division back into the Central 

Region began. On the 10th, at a speech in Britain’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense 

Studies, Carl Bildt took up the call for a 2-year “consolidation period,” based on the tenure of 

the new state government.54 Bildt indicated that a greater burden would be borne by the civilian 

implementation community during this period. Most notably, Bildt was publicly critical of 

NATO’s policy on the arrest of persons indicted for war crimes (PIFWCs). His criticism was 

reasoned and telling:

Infantry battalions are not designed or trained for criminal investigations or other law enforcement 

activities. But if this is the case, and if the present IFOR policy of apprehending indicted persons if 

encountered, and if the tactical situation allows, is more a non-policy than a proper policy, we must 

look at ways of creating the instruments which will be necessary in selected cases in order to ensure 

that the one faction or the other simply does not make a complete mockery of the international 

community.

We must not repeat the mistake of the UN years in the mismatch between rhetoric in New York 

and other places, and the realities on the ground.55

In the fall of 1996, as will be seen below, the politicians of the NAC were not yet prepared 

to take up Bildt’s challenge, though within months they would be. Bildt and others kept up the 

pressure, blaming, somewhat unfairly, the SACEUR, who was scrupulously following explicit 

NAC guidance on the matter.56 The new more assertive policy that developed throughout the 

spring of 1997 can be traced at least in part to the results of two elections, that in November 1996 

in the United States and that later in May in Britain. In the fall of 1996, however, it was still far 

from clear what kind of force would be present in the spring.

In mid-October, the NAC provided guidance for a post-IFOR military force. On 30 October, 

the 1st Infantry Division completed its deployment. On 5 November, US President William 

Jefferson Clinton was reelected for a second term. The next day, the President announced a 

new foreign policy team. UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was to succeed Secretary of 

State Warren Christopher and was to be succeeded herself at the United Nations by Dayton 
91

impresario Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Republican Senator (and Bosnia policy critic) 

William Cohen was to succeed Dr. William Perry as Secretary of Defense, and Anthony Lake, 

the National Security Adviser, was to be succeeded by his assistant, Samuel R. Berger.

A new foreign policy team was to evince some differences with its predecessor, especially 

since neither Christopher nor Perry had been especially adventurous when it came to the 

Balkans.57 On Bosnia, Albright was a maximalist. A principal proponent of the doctrine of 

assertive multilateralism,58 she had led the charge for US intervention from her seat as UN 

Ambassador in Clinton’s first term.59 Cohen, to the contrary, had been an outspoken opponent 

of US Bosnian intervention while he was on the Senate Armed Services Committee, only 

recently having chastised the Administration for bad faith in its original assurances of a 1-year 

commitment.60 Sandy Berger would have to mediate the struggle for control over Bosnia policy 

that was bound to follow, particularly in an administration in which the President had not yet 

demonstrated much interest in foreign policy and in which for the time being Mr. Clinton was 

involved in defending himself against impeachment. The struggle over Balkan policy was a 

fight Madeleine Albright would win in the spring of 1997 with considerable consequences for 

SFOR.61 It was significant that at her public pronouncement of intensified attention to Bosnia, 

Albright threatened more flexible linkages between faction nonperformance and NATO 

sanctions.62 The election of an equally interventionist “New Labor” Government in Britain in 

May would increase the effect of Albright’s policy victory over Cohen.63

On 15 November, President Clinton announced US support for extending NATO Bosnia 

operations to June 1998.64 This he presented as a new mission, required because progress in 

Bosnia had not been as rapid as anticipated. The NATO follow-on force would be smaller 

(about 30,000) and further reduced by half, Clinton said, by late 1997. Outgoing Secretary of 

Defense Perry acknowledged he had been wrong to guarantee a 1-year mission to Bosnia the 

year before.65 His successor and former critic, Mr. Cohen, guaranteed a June 1998 end date at 

his confirmation hearings in January 1997.66 To the discomfort of the international community 

in Bosnia, he would reiterate this position publicly in Tuzla soon after.67

Meanwhile, in Bosnia events showed why a follow-on force was required, whatever promises 

had been made. Commanders of the NORDPOL Brigade of MND-N spoke perceptively when 

they told General Meigs prior to his assumption of command that “the nature of the [IFOR] 

mission is changing from separating forces to a less purely military one of forestalling local 

violence.”68 On 7 November 1997, General Crouch took command of IFOR from Admiral Joseph 

Lopez. Lopez had succeeded Admiral Smith at AFSOUTH in July. Two days later, RS President 

Biljana Plavsic did what Radovan Karadzic had tried to do and failed: she fired General Ratko 

Mladic, commander of the Vojska Republika Srpska (VRS), the RS Army, and an indicted war 

criminal.69 Suddenly, there was a crisis within the Republika Srpska high command that might 

well break out into open civil war between the president and the army. Indeed, it would prove 

to be one of the first indications of a power struggle between Pale-based hardliners and Banja 

Luka-based progressives that would define RS affairs during 1997. (Plavsic was indicted as a 

war criminal herself in January 2001; Progressive is a relative term in the Balkans.)

The next day, the 10th, Montgomery Meigs assumed responsibility for the MND-N AOR 

from General Nash. On Meigs’ second day in charge, fighting broke out in the RS side of the 

ZOS near the former Bosniac settlement of Gajevi. Gajevi is a small ruined village located on 

the side of a hill between the Federation (Bosniac) town of Celic and the RS town of Koraj, in the 

Russian Sector of MND-N in the region of Zvornik. This last major IFOR confrontation would 

be the first major test for Generals Crouch and Meigs. It began, perhaps not coincidentally, 

just an hour after a change of command in the Russian brigade.70 Three (the Russian brigade 

commander, the US MND commander, and COMIFOR) of the four senior NATO commanders, 

General Walker at the ARRC being the one exception, were new to the job. One interested 
92

onlooker, Carl Bildt, would evaluate their response to the challenge, which we will examine 

below in some detail, as successful and decisive.71

The November incident at Gajevi may have been timed to test the new US and Russian 

commanders, but it was simply the most recent in a series of events along the ZOS designed to 

return Bosniac refugees to terrain having a strategic value. Similar events took place in western 

Bosnia, within the Federation, as Croats struggled to maintain their own biological line against 

Serb and Bosniac returnees in towns like Stolac and Drvar while, in central Bosnia, Muslims 

evicted Croats. In the divided Federation city of Mostar, there was continuing factional violence 

between Croats, who claimed Mostar as their ethnic capital, and Muslims, who controlled half 

the city and had deep prewar roots. Like the ZOS, Mostar was another area of special concern 

to the international community in Bosnia. Since 1994, a representative of the European Union 

governed Mostar. In January 1997, the international condominium supervising the rest of Bosnia 

was to take responsibility for the divided city on the same terms as the rest of the country.72 Of all 

these hot spots, however, the events in the ZOS were most dangerous, because it was in the ZOS 

that a spark seemed most likely to set off another explosion of large-scale inter-Entity violence. 

The first incident at Gajevi (first because it was quickly succeeded by others) highlighted the risk 

because of the participation of Bosniac soldiers from a Reserve brigade disguised as refugees 

and because there was an exchange of fire between these “refugees” and RS police.73

The background to the Gajevi incident was formed by a series of similar incidents in MND-N 

in the fall of 1996 at Mahala (US Sector), Dugo Dio, and Jusici (Russian Sector) in an area of the 

ZOS known as the Sapna Thumb because of its oval shape. The Sapna Thumb forms a reentrant 

penetrating the eastern RS much like the Garazde salient further south. The high ground in the 

Sapna Thumb dominates the Drina Corridor, threatening to cut the southeastern third of the RS

from its more northerly and western territories. “You can smell the Drina from Jusici” was the 

Serb expression.74 The high ground around Gajevi threatens control of the eastern entrance to 

the Posavina corridor that connects the eastern and western halves of the RS. Mahala blocks the 

route to Zvornick. The Bosniac objective in these areas was to create Muslim enclaves on strategic 

ground within the Republika Srpska, independent of RS control. The method was to create facts on 

the ground under cover of returns, foment incidents by prompting Serb overreaction (in which 

the Serbs were almost always obliging), then call on NATO troops to separate the parties and 

protect the returnees, thus removing them de facto from Serb jurisdiction. There was particular 

sensitivity to the Russian sector of MND-N, because the Russians were perceived to be apologists 

for the Serbs and more particularly because, for reasons that far transcended Bosnia, any hint 

of Russian failure or embarrassment was deemed by the Americans to be unacceptable. For 

that reason, small elements of US forces were kept in the Russian sector under tactical control 

(TACON) of the Russians, and adjacent US forces were on a short string to provide assistance 

should it be required--bidden or not.

The incident at Jusici began during the morning of 12 October. It involved the arrest of three 

Bosniac returnees by Serb police armed with long-barreled weapons forbidden in the ZOS. The 

Muslims allegedly had pulled down a Serb flag and burned it. They probably had. A crisis 

ensued. MND-N surged into the area to secure it. Bosniac civilians surrounded a Russian 

radio relay site to demand action to release their coreligionists. The ARRC Chief of Staff, Major 

General Michael Wilcox, met with President Biljana Plavsec; the Russian Deputy Commander, 

Colonel Breslovsky, and US brigade commander, Colonel John Batiste, met simultaneously 

with the local Serb officials at Zvornik. All demanded the release of the arrested Muslims. By 

2130, the Bosniacs had been freed and the unauthorized Serb weapons turned over to IFOR.75

Two days later, the Serbs held a protest to complain that IFOR was not preventing Muslim 

encroachment into the Republika Srpska and to object to the requirement that RS police patrols 

enter the ZOS only with international (IPTF) supervision.76
93

The Jusici incident was important because it led IFOR and the Office of the High Representative 

to develop a “Procedure for Returns to the ZOS” to try to impose some order on mass returns.77

The idea was that, by IFOR requiring refereed clearance based on evidence of prewar residence 

first, the Serbs would be confident that they were not just being subjected to a strategic return of 

miscellaneous Bosniacs intent on creating new strategic sites. Of course, as events would show, 

even limited and legitimate returns were too many for the Serb hardliners. These procedures 

were in effect when the the first Gajevi incident occurred on 11 November. General Meigs was 

aware of similar confrontations as he prepared for command of MND-N.78 He was ready for 

the sort of incident that would confront him, having done the intellectual preparation before the 

fact. He and General Crouch both had the character to respond decisively when the challenge 

came.

General Crouch assumed command of IFOR on 7 November 1996. The recorded remarks 

of the speakers, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, General Joulwan, Admiral Lopez, and 

General Crouch, all addressed the progress made and the continuity of the mission until the 

20th of December.79 Then, at the morning IFOR press conference on the 11th, the day after Meigs 

succeeded Nash in MND-N, there was a report that 500 Bosniac refugees had crossed into the 

ZOS headed for Gajevi, in the direction of Koraj.80 There had been a report of an exchange of 

gunfire and one Serb wounded. For most of the press conference, however, the principal issues 

were the broad pattern of resistance to minority returns, affairs in Mostar, and the instability 

perceived in the recent abrupt change of command of the RS army. 

The following day, there were more details. At about 0730 on the 11th, a group of 150 to 200 

Bosniacs carrying rations and sleeping bags had crossed the IEBL near Celic and moved into 

the destroyed villages of Marici and Gajevi in the ZOS. Shots were fired. IFOR immediately 

deployed additional troops and Apache helicopters to the area. More Bosniacs arrived, up to 400 

were reported, along with three groups of unescorted Serb police by the IPTF. More shots were 

fired on the 12th. According to the spokesman for the High Representative, “We believe this to 

be a deliberate, orchestrated, and provocative move to circumvent and discredit the established 

approved procedures for refugee returns to the ZOS. We believe it to have been carried out with 

at best the acquiescence of the Bosnian authorities and at worst their direct complicity.”81 This 

conclusion came from the fact the attempted “return” occurred only 3 days before the meeting 

actually scheduled to interview the putative returnees to determine their right to the specific 

villages in question. That meeting had been scheduled for the 14th. Moreover, the number of 

returnees was greatly in excess of that warranted for what was, in fact, a very small settlement. 

Further details were released on the 13th.82 It seemed that initial events of the 11thhad been 

stabilized by the arrival of additional IFOR soldiers. In fact, it had come close to a very serious 

fight. According to a detailed after action review (AAR) written under Meigs’ supervision, 

around 1545 a group of 58 uniformed RS police armed with AK-47s had arrived by bus from 

Koraj and started moving against the refugee camp. Brigadier General John Abazaid, Meigs’ 

assistant division commander, was on site, and he had requested permission to employ the fires 

of Apache helicopters to stop the Serbs from closing with the Bosniacs. Fortunately, the Serbs 

halted when they saw the Apaches preparing to engage.83 On the morning of the 12th, with 

the Bosniacs still at Gajevi, Serb police, armed with long-barreled weapons, again approached 

the encampment. They were brought under fire by armed Bosniacs, apparently soldiers of the 

Celic-based 254th (Reserve) Brigade of the Bosniac portion of the Federation Army. One person 

was reported killed, two or three wounded. The 254th Brigade chief of staff was identified on 

gun-camera film. Eventually, the reinforcing US battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel 

Steven Layfield of TF 1-18 Infantry, separated the two armed forces, but only after both he and 

the Russians, to whom he was at least nominally under TACON, had been caught in the crossfire. The Serb police, who had civil jurisdiction, had violated an agreement made the day before 
94

whereby they were to enter the area on the 12th in conjunction with their IPTF minders and 

US IFOR troops, after Russian forces had established an outer cordon. Instead, the Serbs had 

departed early, alone, and well-armed. General Meigs again released his helicopters to fire on 

any mortar crews or rocket-propelled grenade launchers, if any were observed. They were not. 

Layfield’s troops eventually swept the area, disarming combatants on both sides. Three AK47s and one rocket-propelled grenade were reported seized from the Bosniacs, six AK-47s and 

eight antitank mines from the RS police. Subsequent information revealed that a large number 

of the returnees were not from the Gajevi area at all. Here was a case for firm, evenhanded 

enforcement, and it followed. 

Meigs, the tactical commander, restored order on site and worked with local political leaders 

to defuse the situation on both sides of the ZOS.84 He also communicated with the faction 

military leaders through Colonel Jim Rabon, his Joint Military Commission Officer, inherited 

from Major General Nash. Rabon first met with the VRS deputy commander in Bijeljina and told 

him to keep his troops out of the affair, which he did. The next night Rabon met with Brigadier 

General Sead Delic, the Bosniac commander of the II Corps of the Armija BiH (AbiH), the Bosniac 

Army in Tuzla. Rabon reported to Meigs that Delic appeared to have lost control over the 254th 

Brigade, which coincidentally was a territorially-based reserve unit in which there may well 

have been ties of kinship with the returnees. When asked by Meigs what recommendation 

Rabon would make, the colonel said they could shut the brigade down. Rabon recalls that he 

was surprised at how quickly Meigs responded, “Let’s do it!”85

Parallel responses at division and theater levels indicate how the various echelons of 

command work out most of the incidents whose containment is within the tactical capabilities 

of the local division commander but which require high-level theater attention because of a 

potential to grow into wider conflict. Meigs called General Walker, the ARRC Commander, still 

serving as Land Component Commander, and recommended that the 254th Brigade be disarmed 

and removed from Celic. According to General Crouch, Walker was ahead of the game. Walker 

and his chief of staff, Major General Mike Wilcocks, started putting together a corps operation 

to disarm and remove the brigade almost at once when the incident was reported. Walker 

recommended to Meigs that he consider creating an exclusion zone around Gajevi, which he 

also did. General Crouch, the IFOR commander, accepted these recommendations and set 

about imposing them at the top in what proved to be a rough learning experience.

At theater level, an international response was formulated by a meeting of the “Principals.” 

The Principals were the leaders of the major international players with authority under the 

General Framework Agreement: the High Representative, the Commander of IFOR, the 

Commissioner of the IPTF, the Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees 

(UNHCR), and the Representative of the OSCE. This group met frequently, sometimes nightly, 

chaired by the High Representative, to coordinate a single position on serious matters and 

present a common front to the national and Entity leaders with whom they dealt.86 

In this case, the Principals dispatched a letter to the respective Entity and state presidents 

(President Izetbegovic as chairman of the 3-man Presidency as well as Muslim member) reciting 

the internationals’ understanding of the incident and condemning both sides.87 The Principals 

demanded an immediate withdrawal of the would-be returnees back to the Federation; strict 

observation of the ban on unauthorized weapons in the ZOS; no further provocative civil or 

military action; and “a complete hold to further provocations, including mining or burning of 

houses, and occupation of houses by people other than their owners.”88 For the time being, all 

ZOS returns were suspended. 

On 14 November, just after 0500, IFOR troops arrived at the 254th Brigade headquarters near 

Celic and seized the weapons and ammunition at the site (Operation SATURN). All weapons 

were to be destroyed and the brigade demobilized. Not surprisingly, a number of weapons 
95

were missing. The new Task Force Eagle soldiers did not execute the mission with precision or 

alacrity, and the delay offered by their lack of crispness permitted a response by the Bosniacs. 

There was only one exit from the weapons site. Bosniac civilians blocked the departure of the 

troops removing the weapons. Some moderate physical force was required by IFOR troops to 

extract themselves from the hostile crowd. The incident was filmed and subjected to detailed 

analysis afterwards. One lesson learned was that Apache propwash was an effective crowd 

control device. As consequences of the detailed after action review, rules of engagement were 

changed, the predeployment training process was modified, and a process was developed for 

dealing with civil unrest. 

Simultaneously with the action against the Bosniac 254th Brigade, IFOR and the IPTF 

inspected the Serb police station at Koraj and confiscated “a representative number” of RS Police 

long-barreled weapons. A ZOS-like exclusion zone was imposed around Celic by the COMIFOR 

until further notice. All weapons other than police side arms were to be banned from this area 

unless special permission was obtained. In the absence of President Izetbegovic, who was out 

of the country, General Crouch and General Walker met separately with Federation (Muslim) 

Vice President Ejup Ganic and RS President Plavsic to inform them of the actions taken. Ganic’s 

aid was requested in removing a crowd that was blocking IFOR soldiers departing the 254th 

Brigade compound. The matter was clouded a bit further that afternoon when General Crouch 

returned to see Vice President Ganic at the latter’s request. In an unrelated incident elsewhere, 

a French IFOR checkpoint in Multinational Division-South East (MND-SE) had held up Bosniac 

General Rasim Delic’s five-vehicle convoy for 45 minutes. Delic, who had appeared in Ganic’s 

office, was the Bosniac commander of the Federation Armed Forces. He threatened to arm 

himself and mobilize the 4th Guard Brigade in response to being stopped. Delic’s threat was 

a violation of the General Framework Agreement but General Crouch resolved the matter by 

stating his regret for what was judged to be an unnecessary inconvenience, although he said he 

couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. With that, the second impasse was ended.89 

Crouch, who had not dealt with faction politicians before, learned a good bit about wading 

into Balkan politics from this experience. He made, he says, a serious error in going to see 

Ganic without communications and without his own interpreter. He found himself presented 

with assertions about the situation on the ground that he could neither verify nor do anything 

about, and he was dependent on American-accented Ganic, an MIT graduate, for translation 

of conversations in the room. In short, he was dependent on whatever Ganic told him for his 

situational awareness. Not surprisingly, he later learned that much of what he had been told 

was incorrect. General Crouch resolved he would never again leave himself at the mercy of 

his interlocutors for situational awareness, either general or particular. Later that day, General 

Meigs and Colonel Mike Thompson, the US brigade combat team commander, addressed a press 

conference after the seizures to describe the events and outline the sanctions that resulted.90 

General Crouch had to defend his decision to destroy the weapons seized from the 254th 

Brigade when it was questioned by US policymakers involved just then with getting the Train 

and Equip Program up and running.91 To those involved in arming the Federation, particularly 

the Bosniac forces, it always seemed counterproductive to deliver weapons with one hand (US) 

while removing them with another hand (NATO). The logic of “even handed enforcement” (and 

NATO allies’ opposition on principle to Train and Equip), however, entailed such paradoxes. In 

the end, the IFOR Commander’s arguments prevailed. 

General Crouch conducted an after action review at a subsequent commander’s conference, 

drawing on the general experience of the ARRC as well as the more recent series of events in 

the ZOS. As a result of events at Gajevi and other incidents, General Crouch concluded that 

the contending factions had identified IFOR’s shaky ability to deal with organized crowds as 

a structural weakness they could exploit. He set his subordinates the task to conduct what he 
96

calls “an intellectual research process” to discover the pathologies of the politically directed 

organized crowd and to develop techniques for dealing with them. 

The IFOR commanders and staff developed a different kind of intelligence preparation of 

the battlefield (IPB) and new methods to preempt crowd confrontations. It was discovered, for 

example, that such “rent-a-mobs” were normally assembled elsewhere and transported to the 

intended point of confrontation by bus. To turn this practice in IFOR’s favor, bus companies 

would be placed under surveillance. When a large group began to assemble at a bus company, 

composition and apparent intent were to be noted, and headquarters informed. The SFOR 

leadership also developed a set of alternatives to the use of violence to deal with these movable 

assemblies. Bus company owners were warned that, if they were party to illegal events, their 

buses could be seized for violations of Annex 1A and their livelihood lost as a consequence. 

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were employed to track the progress of bus convoys that 

got underway. An “art of interdiction” was developed to hinder multivehicle movement. 

Movable checkpoints were used to break groups of vehicles into separate elements, eventually 

stopping their progress entirely before they arrived at their intended objective and thus forcing 

the participants to walk some distance to complete their mission. In short, by focusing on the 

nature of the problem, commanders discovered they were not without resources to respond to 

this new challenge without resorting to more violent means that would inevitably rebound on 

NATO forces.92

IFOR/SFOR summarized a doctrine or Event Methodology to be employed in dealing with 

incidents like Gajevi. It included the following steps:

1. Meet with event organizers--pursue least provocative alternative.

2. Coordinate with national and local leaders to encourage public coorperation.

3. Defuse tensions thru information campaign.

4. Civil Police & IPTF provide point and route security.

5. SFOR provides general area security.

(A key point, drawn from IFOR experience is the mandate to Maintain escalation dominance.)93

The 1st Armored Division had developed a similar formula in spring 1996. Theirs was expressed 

in four imperatives. 

1. Isolate;

2. Dominate;

3. Attack at all echelons; and, 

4. Mass.94 

SFOR also developed a Returns Methodology whereby factional returnees could be resettled 

according to a safe, controlled process. 

There continued to be conflict around Gajevi, fomented by the Bosniacs in Celic and resisted 

by Serbs in Koraj. But future conflicts would not involve armed members of the faction armed 

forces, which was IFOR’s first concern.95 Insofar as imposing his authority on the faction armed 

forces was concerned, General Crouch had made his point. 

Meanwhile, NATO and the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) began to thrash out a way 

to sustain the gains of the first year of their administration of Bosnia. Semiformal political 

dialogue concerning a follow-on force for IFOR had begun at least by September 1996 in the 

informal ministerial meeting at Bergan, Norway. However, formal planning was not authorized 

by the NAC until 18 November, although the public record gives the distinct impression of the 

fleshing out of a policy already agreed to in principle and even in some detail.96 Final decision 
97

was reserved until a subsequent ministerial meeting in Brussels on 10 December 1996. On 20 

November, the date of the TOA from the ARRC to IFOR, the IFOR press spokesman explained 

that the command was now on the ramp down from a current strength of 45,000 (itself down 

from 60,000) to 30,000.97 On the 27th, NATO ambassadors agreed to an 18-month commitment, 

subject to review every 6 months.98 General Joulwan sent SACEUR Operation Plan (OPLAN) 

10406, JOINT GUARD, to the NAC on 30 November. 

The new plan provided for an operation in four stages: transition, stabilization, deterrence 

(and drawdown), and mission completion.99 The tasks described were essentially those of IFOR, 

derived from Annex 1A of the Dayton Accords. What is particularly interesting, however, are 

the tasks that the NAC was not willing to direct, though the explicit nature of their refusal 

was not made public at the time. In the name of complete clarity of mission, General Joulwan 

confronted the NAC with some direct questions. Specifically, he asked: Is it the will of the 

Council that SFOR should pursue war criminals? Should SFOR escort returnees? And was it 

their desire that SFOR’s military forces engage in police work? Joulwan indicated that to do 

any or all of these things would require a force larger than that otherwise anticipated. To each 

of these questions, the response was an unequivocal No!100 These decisions were recorded on 

NATO Decision Sheets from the NAC. These Decision Sheets were provided to the SACEUR 

and in fact constitute the real limits to the IFOR or SFOR mandate, as opposed to the Dayton 

taskings and authorities. They embody the political guidance under which Alliance forces 

operated.101 (But within 8 months, by July 1997, in a trend that would continue, SFOR would 

become increasingly engaged in various aspects of all three activities, none more prominently 

than the pursuit of PIFWCs.)

Important changes on the civilian front in December 1996 would affect the new SFOR 

mission. On the 4th and 5th of December, the PIC met in London.102 NATO Secretary General 

Javier Solana reported on NATO’s intention to organize a follow-on “Stabilization Force” 

(SFOR). He encouraged the civilian side to take a more prominent role in peace implementation 

and to learn from IFOR the importance of clear objectives, agreed timelines, and necessary 

resources.103 The PIC urged greater coordination between IFOR/SFOR and the OSCE SubRegional Arms Control Program (Vienna Agreement). The latter aimed at building a military 

balance between the military forces of the Entities and their sponsoring neighbors under Annex 

1B of the General Framework Agreement. The PIC underwrote the Procedures for ZOS Returns. 

It called on IFOR/SFOR and the IPTF to work together, and more importantly it supported 

extending the IPTF mandate to include investigating human rights abuses by law enforcement 

authorities, including directed enforcement.104 The latter was a first step toward empowering 

the international community to remove obstructionist officials, a power finally granted the High 

Representative only at the Bonn PIC a year later.105 The PIC did go some way toward increasing 

the authority of the High Representative to “coordinate” international agencies, though Bildt 

argues that the United States was markedly reluctant to empower any “strong-actors not under 

their direct command.”106 Finally, the NAC called on the UN Security Council to continue the 

authority of NATO in Bosnia in accordance with authorities granted a year before.

On 10 December 1996, at Brussels, the Ministerial Meeting of the NAC approved the 

SACEUR OPLAN for the new mission subject to passage of an acceptable (Chapter VII) UN 

Security Council Resolution.107 Two days later, the Security Council authorized the mission 

in Resolution 1088 (1996). The Security Council followed the London PIC in authorizing an 

enhancement of the High Representative’s coordinating authority, an important clarification 

in light of the prominence of UN agencies in civilian implementation, and it enhanced the 

authority of the IPTF in

Investigating or assisting with investigations into human rights abuses by law enforcement 
98

personnel, as well as to report on progress by the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina 

in regard to such issues, in particular their compliance with IPTF-prescribed guidelines 

including their taking prompt and effective action, which could include dismissal 

where appropriate, in respect of any officer notified to them by the IPTF Commissioner 

as failing to cooperate with the IPTF or adhere to democratic policing principles.108

On the 17th, General Joulwan briefed the press on the concept of operations for the 18-month 

Operation JOINT GUARD.109 Joulwan indicated that the transition to SFOR was expected to 

take about 45 days, to early February 1997. The stabilization phase would follow with “our 

number one aim here: not separating the force, but preventing a Spring offensive, preventing 

hostilities. These will be the primary and principal military tasks that SFOR will be asked to 

do.”110 Joulwan anticipated the stabilization phase would last a year, to be followed by the 

deterrent phase and withdrawal in June 1998. Of course, the locals would have something to 

say about that. In the question-and-answer session that followed, Secretary General Solana 

supported a suggestion by US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, 

that a specially trained police force be sent into Bosnia to pursue war criminals, but Solana was 

equally clear to reiterate the NATO position that

IFOR [sic] is not a police force, therefore it’s not going to be chasing war criminals. That is 

something that is very clear in the [North Atlantic] Council, and the countries have given that 

mission in a very clear and well-defined manner. We are prepared to guarantee a secure environment 

for other forces of a police nature who are prepared to do it. . . . But as I said before, and will keep on 

saying, it was in the OPLAN of IFOR first, it will be in the OPLAN now: this is not a mission that 

IFOR is going to take. Let’s get that very clear: we are not a police force. [Emphasis added.] 111

With the Security Council Resolution in hand, the NATO defense ministers granted final 

approval to the SFOR mission on 18 December 1996.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4

1. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefings, Campaign Plan ’96 (2 briefings-January 1996?) and 

General Crouch Briefing to Senior Commanders (March 1996). There is a set of three briefings from the Commander’s 

Initiatives Group that were apparently used to develop the 1996 revision of the 1995 campaign plan. One is dated 

in January 1996. It assesses the progress on the 1995 plan, apparently from staff input, and indicates that General 

Crouch wanted additional emphasis on troop discipline and accountability, and that he intended to do what he 

could to improve the living conditions of single soldiers while bringing them back into unit consolidated housing. 

Filed with the January “Assessment Briefing” is what might be characterized as a Campaign Planning Briefing

(undated) stating the same thing in positive terms. A March Briefing for Senior Commanders covers the same ground 

and lays out the concept for withdrawing TF Eagle from Bosnia. 

2. Slide dated 1/2/96, “Conclusions . . . Operational Watershed,” in Briefing (VGT), Campaign Plan ’96.

3. Comments of General Crouch to author.

4. NATO reorganized again in 2000, and LANDCENT was redesignated Joint Headquarters Center.

5. Resdesignated Regional Headquarters Allied Forces North Europe in the same reorganization.

6. General Joulwan told the author he started working on inserting an American into the LANDCENT rotation 

soon after he assumed command in Europe in 1994.

7. Comment made to author by General Crouch describing his situation upon taking command of LANDCENT 

in February 1996.
99

8. Strictly speaking, until the headquarters was deployed, at LANDCENT General Crouch was subordinate to 

the German Commander in Chief, Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT).

9. See criticism of Senators John McCain and William Cohen in Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed 

Services, U.S. PARTICIPATION IN BOSNIA, Hearing Before the Committee on Armed Services, 104th Cong., 2nd sess., 

August 1, October 2, 3, 1996, pp. 63-65, 84-86. In hearings conducted in October, shortly after announcement of 

mission extension, Senator Cohen, soon to be Secretary of Defense William Perry’s successor, pointed out that 

Secretary Perry had indicated before Congress that withdrawal of US Forces was expected to begin in October 1996, 

implying that 20 December was a true mission end date. Cohen also quoted General John Shalikashvili, Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concerning the duration of the mission. Cohen himself would soon be giving assurances 

to the Congress on mission duration that he could not keep.

10. The agreement between General Crouch and then Chief of Staff General Dennis Reimer is frequently 

mentioned. The author has been unable to document it and, indeed, it may have been informal. A good general 

discussion is in Headquarters USAREUR, Chief of Staff, Operation Joint Guard After Action Report (November 1998), 

5-12 to 5-15, and 8-4 to 8-6. Of particular interest, in light of the Army’s general budgetary problems discussed in 

the previous chapters, is the fact that, while Army end strength was permitted to rise for Operation Joint Endeavor, 

no additional funds were allocated by Congress to pay for the increase in manpower costs.

11. In addition to USAREUR requirements, EUCOM Headquarters manning was increased by almost 500 

soldiers, the equivalent of increasing USEUCOM manning by a battalion. As a consequence, a lot of CONUS units 

paid a personnel tax involving sending individual fillers on temporary duty to Europe to serve in one headquarters 

or another.

12. See Prepared Statement by Undersecretary of Defense, Walter B. Slocombe in United States Senate, 

Committee on Armed Services, U.S. PARTICIPATION IN BOSNIA, 104th Cong., 2nd sess., 17 and briefing by Rear 

Admiral Charles W. Moore, Jr., USN, Deputy Director of Operations, Joint Staff, Ibid., 5-6. Both are testimony given 

in August 1996.

13. According to Colonel Greg Fontenot, Commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in TF Eagle, he 

kept the units until after the elections. The JOINT GUARD After Action Report indicates they withdrew before.

14. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Briefing, Supporting Peace, Projecting Power, Update for the 

Secretary of the Army, March 1996, lays out the “soldier-crew maintenance strategy.”

15. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Commander’s Initiatives Group, MEMORANDUM FOR 

RECORD, SUBJECT: Aide Memoire 8 April, CINCUSAREUR (1. Purpose: To summarize findings and insights 

from CINCUSAREUR 3-5 April TF Eagle Visit . . .), dated 8 April 1996, in HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch 

Papers, folder tabbed: 350-1d, CinC’s B-H Trip Visit Notes (3-5 April 1996).

16. 10 USC, Sec 164 (c)(F) and 10 USC, Sec3013 (b).

17. HQ USAREUR, Officer of the Commander, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After Action 

Report, Vol I (May 1997), 174-175. There are any number of briefings in the Crouch files at USAREUR addressing 

the various withdrawal options. Of particular interest are Headquarters USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, 

Notebook, Operation JOINT ENDEAVOR; From the Central Region to D+ 60, Senior Officer Training Program 17-19 April 

1996, Chiemsee, Germany, and an undated briefing, Update to Ambassador Donald Blinken [Ambassador to Hungary] By 

General William W. Crouch. In July (2 and 3), General Crouch briefed Secretary of Defense Perry on The Way Ahead. 

This briefing covers restructuring to replace armor and to bring in construction engineers to take camps down; the 

covering force; and the redeployment concept. The briefing for Ambassador Blinken lays out the timelines to be 

followed in establishing the withdrawal infrastructure and the activities to be performed at each stage.

18. General Petrosky to author. General Petrosky says this news came as something of a shock. In testimony 

before Congress after he retired, Admiral Leighton Smith said that he found out about this new interpretation 

in January or February 1996. Testimony of Admiral Leighton Smith in Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed 

Services, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session, U.S. PARTICIPATION IN BOSNIA, 104th Cong. 2nd sess., 

79. See also HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander in Chief, Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters 
100

After Action Report, Vol I, 168-175. Note with regard to USAREUR After Action Report SACEUR guidance on 

national force contributions is not nearly so interesting as the national guidance with which it is contrasted. In this 

case, it was the national guidance that governed. General Joulwan says he briefed NATO Secretary General Solana 

on the timing and actions necessary to execute a new follow-on mission in January or February 1996, and that 

Solana’s immediate response was that necessary guidance could not be secured in time due to the timing of the US 

national election. General Joulwan to author. 

19. General Joulwan told the author he briefed this solution to a closed session of the North Atlantic Council 

in July 1996. The idea of a covering force, wherever it originated, at USAREUR as General Petrosky and Crouch 

believe, or simultaneously at SHAPE, met the needs of the political leadership of NATO and the US government as 

it allowed logically for anticipation of opposite futures.

20. The military police and engineer units that came in as part of the restructuring force remained in Bosnia 

and transferred to the 1st ID brigade combat team for the duration of the covering force. They withdrew by March 

1998.

21. Story told by General Joulwan to author.

22. HQ USAREUR, Chief of Staff, Operation Joint Guard After Action Report, 5-14, 5-15.

23. Onr brigade combat team notionally affiliated with the 1st Infantry Division was located at Fort Riley in 

CONUS.

24. The 3d Battalion, 5th Cavalry, redesignated the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry, in 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored 

Division, returned from 6 months in Macedonia (ABLE SENTRY) in May 1995, deployed to Bosnia in December 

1995, and returned again in summer 1997.

25. In the notes of a 30 October meeting, apparently at IFOR, General Crouch is quoted as reflecting that he is 

“in the uncomfortable position of, as the force provider, managing force levels and, as the operational commander, 

wanting perhaps more than can be provided.” Aide Memoir [sic], 30 October 1996, Subject: General Officer SOR 

7 meeting, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Journal, Volume 1A, 

Supporting Documents, 20 October 1996--1 February 1997.

26. Operation Joint Guard After Action Report, 3-2.

27. Two Companies of the 2d Battalion, 14th Infantry to begin with.

28. General Crouch eventually arrived at an arrangement with national authorities whereby he had a fast 

channel to call upon a number of units to serve as operational reserve if needed and permission to train them for the 

role in advance. Headquarters USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Crouch Papers, Key Topic Smart Book, 

1997, contains an unsigned Memorandum, dated 24 March 1997, SUBJECT: OPERATIONAL RESERVE UPDATE, 

that outlines the arrangements. Major General Nix and Major General J. B. Burns both validated the information in 

the memorandum for the author. General Crouch opined that for him as COMSFOR it was never a great issue as he 

was always confident that if he needed the reserve it would be made available to him.

29. Colonel Donald G. Goff to author. 

30. It is important to keep in mind that the covering force as described here was a US national initiative. In fact, 

all troop rotation schemes were national schemes.

31. HQ USAREUR, Chief of Staff, Operation Joint Guard After Action Report, 5-22. USAREUR (Forward) was 

deactivated on 28 February 1997 once the transition to SFOR was complete.

32. Author first heard the term used by MG Larry Lust, General Crouch’s DCSLOG at USAREUR. See HQ 

USAREUR, Chief of Staff, Operation Joint Guard After Action Report, 7-30, 7-31.

33. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, History 1996, “The Evolution of NATO and ACE 1996.” 
101

Available on line at http://www.shape.nato.int/HISTORY/his_96.htm.

34. Major General K. J. Drewienkiewicz, slide “Why I Lie Awake at Night,” from briefing, Getting Missions 

Started, by Maj Gen. [K.] John Drewienkiewicz, Royal College of Defence Studies. Provided to author. (Hereinafter 

Drewienkiewicz briefing.)

35. Major General Drewienkiewicz to author.

36. In discussion General Joulwan refers frequently to the example of Eisenhower’s experience in World War 

II.

37. Major General Drewienkiewicz to the author.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. General Joulwan to author.

41. The assembly of intelligence was complicated by the fact that intelligence is essentially a national function 

and nations are reluctant to share. Each of the key nations (US, Britain, and France) had large national intelligence 

centers (called NICs) that fed their principal national military leaders and their national formations. Smaller 

nations, for example Greece and Turkey, had their own unique capabilities.

42. General Nix to author.

43. Half had gone in July.

44. The Army’s Battle Command Training Program consists of four traveling teams, A, B, C, and D. These teams 

fall in on existing chains of command and staffs to provide observer-controllers to facilitate uniquely designed 

command post exercises. Team Delta specializes in support of Joint and Combined headquarters.

45. His assassination in July 1914 by Serb terrorists in Sarajevo set off the train of events that led to World War 

I.

46. Headquarters LANDCENT, Office of the Commander, Briefing, LANDCENT TO IFOR TRANSITION, Slide 

titled “Command and Control Structure,” dated 3/05/97. Slide shows reduction from 868 to 469 staff members, 

and a turnover since November 1996 of 85 percent. Briefing in HQ USAREUR, History Office, file, AUSA Brief, 

LANDCENT-IFOR Transition, SFOR UPDATE, file number 3960.06, 14 May ’97.

47. General Drewienkiewicz to author.

48. Office of the High Representative, Document, Chairman’s Conclusions of the Peace Implementation Council, 

Florence, 13-14 June 1996, paragraph 24. Available on line at http://www.ohr.int/docu/d960613a.htm. Note this 

proposal referred only to treaty implementation. It did not address directly the question of extended military 

participation. See also Carl Bildt, Peace Journey, 299.

49. See Prepared Statement by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Walter B. Slocombe in Congress, Senate, 

Committee on Armed Forces, U.S. PARTICIPATION IN BOSNIA, 104th Cong., 2nd sess., 18-19. Slocombe referred 

directly to the Khobar Tower bombing.

50. Comments of Mans Nyberg, Headquarters IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 

16 October 1996. Nyberg outlined the procedures. In various press conferences subsequent to the November 

confrontation at Gajevi, described below, the returns procedures are discussed in some detail in questions and 

answers with the press. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961016a.htm.

51. Term taken from information provided by e-mail, dated June 28, 2000, by Mr. Joseph J. Drach, POLAD for 
102

1st Infantry Division in Bosnia 1996-1997.

52. Bildt, Peace Journey, 269-71.

53. Ibid.., 287.

54. Carl Bildt, “The prospects for peace in Bosnia,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 141, No. 5 (December, 1996), 1-5. This 

speech, delivered on 10 October 1996, marks the beginning of a more active public role for Bildt, arguing for more 

aggressive stance to force implementation by the international community and, inter alia, more authority for the 

Office of High Representative. The latter, along with the Bosnian state and Entity structures, is very much his 

legacy.

55. Ibid., 5.

56. Bildt, Peace Journey, 348-349. Bildt does not conceal his dislike of General Joulwan, whom he sees as the 

principal obstacle to civil implementation. See for example Bildt, Peace Journey, 131, 147.

57. Ibid., 332-333, 357.

58. See essay by Brian Urquhart, “Mission Impossible,” The New York Review of Books (November 18, 1999), 

26-29. Urquhart’s review of the Mark Bowden book, Black Hawk Down, is a critique of US foreign policy in the first 

Clinton Administration. The term aggressive multilateralism is taken from Urquhart’s essay.

59. Ivo H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings 

Institution Press, 2000), 8, 93,167-170, 177-178. Daalder was a member of the National Security Council during the 

period, and his book is a needed corrective to Holbooke’s well-written but narrowly focused memoir.

60. See note 9 above.

61. Daalder, Getting to Dayton, 177. For additional insight refer to sources in Daadler’s note 15 at the bottom of 

the page. For the impact on NATO military command see General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, 

Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), xxviii-xxix, 91-92.

62. Department of State, Secretary of State, Statements, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright: Remarks at 

Annual Fleet Week Gala, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, New York, May 22, 1997. Available on line at http://

www.secretary.state.gov/www/statements/970522a.html. 

Full implementation must be our goal in all sectors, and the parties cannot pick and choose those 

elements that they prefer at the expense of others. If they are not complying on key implementation 

tasks, it will not be business as usual for their politicians or their military leaders. For example, if 

the parties do not comply with arms control obligations [an OSCE task], SFOR will have the option 

to restrict military movements and training. 

Of course, SFOR was already doing that to enforce mine lifting programs.

63. The “New” Labor government of Tony Blair was ideologically committed to humanitarian interventions. 

See Prime Minister Tony Blair’s declaration of principle during the Kosovo bombing campaign, Great Britain, 

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, News, “Speech by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to the Economic Club of 

Chicago, Hilton Hotel, Chicago, USA, Thursday 22 April 1999.” Available on line at http://www.fco.gov.uk/news/ 

speechtext.asp?2316. 

64. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Remarks by the President in Press Availability (November 15, 

1996). Available on line at http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-...oma.eop.gov.us/1996/11/15/6.text.1.

65. USA Today, “Perry: Promise was a mistake” (November 18, 1996), A-13.

66. Pat Towell, “Cohen, in confirmation hearing, vows timely Bosnia pullout,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly 
103

Report (January 25, 1997), 247-248. Cohen would loyally declare the national policy of a June 1998 pullout until the 

President contradicted him.

67. Bildt, Peace Journey, 332-333. It is perhaps indicative of Bildt’s attitude to the Secretary of Defense that Bildt 

habitually gets his name wrong--calling him Richard rather than William. Bildt argues that Cohen’s statements 

were a source of instability that took great effort and some time to overcome.

68. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook 4 November 1996-25 November 1996, Entry for 7 

November.

69. HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 9 November 1996. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961109a.htm. Bildt, Peace Journey, 82.

70. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook 4 November 1996-25 November 1996, Entry for 11-12 

November.

71. Bildt, Peace Journey, 296-297.

72. Ibid., 29-30, 48, 49, 320-321.

73. Reserve units were territorial so some of the brigade soldiers may have been legitimate returnees, though 

it is unlikely all were.

74. Quotation provided by Colonel Jim Rabon. Colonel Rabon was Joint Military Commission Officer for 

Generals Nash and Meigs at the time of the command transition. As such, he was the military link between 

the commander of MND-N and senior faction commanders. VRS General Simic, commander of the III Corps at 

Bijeljina, made the comment.

75. HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 12 October 1996. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961012a.htm.

76. HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 15 October 1996. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961015a.htm.

77. The program was announced on 15 October. The procedures were explained at some length in the press 

conferences following the Celic-Gajevi incident on 11 November. For announcement see HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, 

Transcript of the press conference held on 16 October 1996. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/ 

t961016a.htm.

78. Colonel Maxie McFarland to author. McFarland was HQUSAREUR (Forward) G-2 and later Meigs’ 

executive officer at SFOR. 

79. Contained in HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 7 November 1996. Available on 

line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961107a.htm.

80. HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 11 November 1996. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961111a.htm.

81. Statement by Major Simon Haselock in HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 7 

November 1996. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961112a.htm.

82. Statement by Major Brett Boudreau in HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 13 

November 1996. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961113a.htm.

83. HQ, USAREUR, 126th Military History Detachment (MHD), Operation Joint Endeavor, AEAGS-MH, 

MEMORANDUM FOR COMMANDING GENERAL, TASK FORCE EAGLE (TFE), SUBJECT: Summary of CELIC 

Incident and Operation Saturn, dated 27 November 1996. (Hereinafter 126th MHD Report) The report is signed by 
104

Major Michael V. Pacheco, Commander 126th MHD, Major J. L. Lyon, Commander 326th MHD, and Major Edwin 

Acevedo, NATO Joint Analysis Team. The report and much supporting documentation, which includes notes by 

MG Meigs on an early draft, is in a large notebook in the USAREUR History Office.

84. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, folder 3980.01, Return of Refugees to Gajevi, contains copies of 

two memoranda forwarded to General Crouch by General Meigs and a copy of a recommended response prepared 

for General Crouch. A 3 December 1996 MEMORANDUM FOR Commanding General, SUBJECT: Update on Celic, 

3 Dec 96, prepared by General Meigs’ Political Adviser, Joe Drach, summarizes post incident meetings with political 

figures. A 5 December 1996 MEMORANDUM FOR COMIFOR, SUBJECT: Return of Refugees to Gajevi, prepared 

by Drach but signed by Meigs outlines follow-on actions and requests pressure by the Principals on RS leadership. 

The draft response prepared for Crouch but unsigned, outlines actions by the Principals. Note: Sometimes this first 

incident is named for the Federation base at Celic, sometimes the Bosniac objective at Gajevi. Later incidents are 

named after Gajevi.

85. 126th MHD Report. Rabon’s Memorandum to General Meigs reporting his meeting with BG Delic on 

12 November is at attachment to the report. Colonel Rabon told the author of his surprise that General Meigs 

immediately agreed with the idea of disarming the brigade; apparently it was the course of action he was already 

considering.

86. Both General Joulwan and General Crouch believe Admiral Lopez created this group. Carl Bildt claims 

it was his idea. More than likely it was the case that both sought the venue. SFOR, unlike the other baronies in 

the international structure, had explicit independence in the Dayton Agreement’s Annex 1A, so Admiral Lopez 

may have joined of his own volition, whereas the other civil officials owed some degree of loyalty to the High 

Representative under his authorities to “coordinate” and interpret the General Framework Agreement where it 

pertained to civil implementation.

87. In General Crouch’s Papers at the USAREUR History Office, in a folder marked 1010.01 96, Specific Incidents, 

there are copies of a number of documents related to the first incident at Gajevi. Among them is a copy of the letter 

from the Office of the High Representative to Presidents Alija Izebegovic (Chair of the Tri-Presidency), President 

Federation President Kresimir Zubak, and RS President Biljana Plavsic, detailing the events at Gajevi and imposing 

the sanctions described. Deputy High Representative Steiner, General Crouch, Commissioner Fitzgerald of the 

IPTF and a representative of the UNHCR signed the letter.

88. Parts of the missive were read by Colum Murphy, Spokesman for the Office of the High Representative, 

quoted in HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 13 November 1996. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961113a.htm.

89. HQ USAREUR History Office, Crouch Papers, folder 1010.01 96, Specific Incidents, letter dated 15 November 

1996, from Lieutenant General Michael Walker, COMARRC, to General Rasim Delic. The letter from Walker takes 

Rasim Delic to task for threats delivered by Delic’s staff at the checkpoint in MND-SE. Walker indicates he, too, had 

apologized to Delic and that a reciprocal apology by Delic is in order.

90. HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, folder 1020.01 96, Celic Incident, “Opening Statement--MG 

Meigs.”

91. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook 4 November 1996-25 November 1996, Entry for 18-23 

November.

92. Information drawn from discussion with General Crouch.

93. General Julian Burns, the IFOR CJ5, later General Shinseki’s CJ3, was responsible for much of the translation 

of local folk wisdom into a sort of command doctrine for IFOR/SFOR. MG J. B. Burns made the observation about 

escalation dominance to the author.

94. Information provided by Colonel Greg Fontenot.

95. Additional information taken from Unsigned Memorandum for General Joulwan, 142130(L) November 1996, 
105

SUBJECT: Summary of Significant Events, 14 November, Celic Incident; Memorandum for Record (14 November 

1996), Subject: COMIFOR Meeting with Federation Vice President Ganic, 1000 Hours, 14 November, signed by 

Anthony J. Tata, LTC Infantry, Special Asst to COMIFOR, and MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD (14 November 

1996), Subject: COMIFOR Meeting with Federation Vice President Ganic, 1430 Hours, 14 November, unsigned with 

signature block for LTC Tata. All three documents in Headquarters USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, 

Notebook, Stabilization Force Journal, Volume 1A, Supporting Documents, 20 October 96-1 February 1997.

96. Announced in Office of the High Representative, Bulletin, No 26, issued November 22, 1996, available on 

line at http://www.ohr.int/bulletins/b961122.htm.

97. HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 20 November 1996. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961120a.htm.

98. Office of the High Representative, Bulletin, No 27, issued December 2, 1996, available on line at http://

www.ohr.int.bulletins/b961202.htm.

99. The order itself remains classified. A synopsis of its major points can be found in HQ USAREUR, Chief of 

Staff, Operation Joint Guard After Action Report, 5-1 to 5-5.

100. George A. Joulwan and Christopher C. Shoemaker, Civilian-Military Cooperation in the Prevention of Deadly 

Conflict; Implementing Agreements in Bosnia and Beyond, A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing 

Deadly Conflict (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, December 1998), 36. In an interview with the 

author, General Joulwan attached great importance to his role as SACEUR in forcing clarity out of what was often 

imprecise political guidance.

101. Discussion of documentation of guidance and NATO process, General Joulwan to author.

102. There are three separate public documents whose reading is required for full understanding of what 

transpired at London. The first is the Conference Report, reproduced in Office of the High Representative, 

Document, Peace Implementation Conference: Bosnia & Herzegovina 1997: Making Peace Work, London, Lancaster 

House, 4-5 December 1996. Available on line at http://www.ohr.int/docu/d961205b.htm. The second is the conference’s 

“Summary of Conclusions,” available at http://www.ohr.int/docu/d961205c.htm The third, and in some ways 

most important for interpreting the diplomatic formulas is the joint press conference that followed the conference, 

Office of the High Representative, Briefing, Press Conference: The Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth 

Affairs, the Rt. Hon. Malcolm Rifkind, QC MP, and the High Representative, Mr. Carl Bildt, London, 05 December 1996. 

Available on line at http://www.ohr.int/press/p961205a.htm. The comments at the press conference are stronger 

and more positive than those of the documents, particularly with regard to the enhanced authority of the High 

Representative in terms of his power to coordinate the various agencies involved in civilian implementation 

and to administer aid on terms of “conditionality.” Mr. Rifkind’s explanation of the intention with regard to the 

sanction authority of the IPTF is also stronger: “We have agreed that in 1997 the force [IPTF] will be able to conduct 

independent investigation of human rights abuses and require prompt and immediate action by the Bosnian authorities if 

local police officers are obstructing the IPTF’s activities or otherwise abusing their position.” [Emphasis added.]

103. NATO, Speeches, Peace Implementation Conference, Presentation by the NATO Secretary General, London, 

December 4, 1996. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1996/s961204a.htm. See Bildt’s comments on 

the difference between military and civil planning in Bildt, Peace Journey, 301-302.

104. The issue of enforcement was made explicit in Bosnia, too. See comments by Alex Ivanko in HQ IFOR: 

AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 6 December 1996. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/

t961206a.htm. Note the AFSOUTH notation was not correct after 20 November. It was retained on the Press Releases 

for some time, however.

105. The American head of the OSCE Mission, who chaired and had power to rule over the Bosnia Election 

Commission, could have eliminated any number of obstructive leaders by simply ruling them ineligible to run for 

office. That he did not is somewhat indicative of the western reluctance to manipulate the election process publicly. 

Eventually, OSCE would rule the RS SRS party ineligible to contest elections and there would be suggestions from 

Richard Holbrooke that the SDS should also be excluded. International Crisis Group, Bosnia’s November Elections: 
106

Dayton Stumbles, ICG Balkans Report No. 104, 18 December 2000, 8. Available on line at http://www.intl-crisisgroup.org.

106. Bildt, Peace Journey, 109, 300.

107. NATO, Press Communiqué M-NAC-2 (96) 166, Issued at the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic 

Council held at NATO HQ, Brussels, 10 December 1996, Statement on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Available on line at 

http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1996/p96-166e.htm.

108. United Nations, Security Council, S/RES/1088 (1996), 19961212, 12 December 1996, Resolution 1088 (1996), 

Adopted by the Security Council at its 3723rd meeting on 12 December 1996. Available on line at http://srch0.un.org:

80/Docs/scres/1996/9636243e.htm.

109. General George Joulwan in NATO, Speeches, Press Conference by the Secretary General and the SACEUR, 

Meeting of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in Defense Ministers Session, NATO HQ, Brussels, 17th Dec 

1996. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1996/s961217e.htm.

110. Ibid.

111. Secretary General Javier Solana, ibid.
107

CHAPTER 5

SFOR BEGINS: DECEMBER 1996 TO JULY 1997

On 20 December 1996, at the headquarters at Ilidza, General William Crouch lowered the 

IFOR flag and raised that of SFOR at a “Changing of the Mandate” ceremony. General Crouch’s 

remarks emphasized the common international goal, 

to encourage within the entities the responsibility for their own development, for establishment of their 

own common institution[s], for creating an infrastructure that will revitalize the economy of this 

country, dynamics that will facilitate the return of refugees and allow true freedom of movement 

and give people a stake in the peace, a reason not to fight.” [Emphasis added.]1 

SFOR’s contribution, he said, would continue to be a secure environment, provided by 

“impartial and even-handed enforcement.” General George Joulwan also spoke. The SACEUR 

reflected on the progress already made, highlighting, among other things, the contribution of 

SFOR engineers, reopening transportation links, air, road, and rail, which permitted something 

like a return to normalcy. Out in the divisions, the transition was probably seamless except for 

the continuing reduction in available forces that was scheduled to bottom out at a total of 30,000, 

sometime in February 1997. That reduction meant that soon only half the forces would be there 

to carry on the day-to-day operations ensuring the faction militaries fulfilled their obligations 

and helping the civilian implementation process along as best they could.

The SFOR mission statement is fairly innocuous. It only hints at the kind of activities in 

which the NATO force would be engaged and then without really indicating the task mix. 

Mission Statement

Stabilization Force executes military tasks of the General Framework Agreement for Peace 

within the AOR for 18 months, deters hostilities, stabilizes Bosnia-Herzegovina and assists in 

the consolidation of the peace by contributing, within capabilities, to a secure enviornment and 

fostering ongoing civil implementation plans. On order, provide emergency support to United 

Nations Transitional Authority for Eastern Slavonia. 

SACEUR’s OPLAN 10406 listed specific requirements. These had to be fitted into a conceptual 

framework that could be used to generate and coordinate the several parallel efforts SFOR 

would conduct to accomplish the assigned missions within the SACEUR priorities. The first 

step, not surprisingly, was a trip to the “Zinc Mines” by General Crouch and his LANDCENT 

principals to work through the content of the various documents and authorities under which 

SFOR acted.

The task of developing the first cut at an SFOR campaign plan was given in the fall of 1996 

to the USAREUR Commander’s Initiatives Group, now led by Colonel Michael Heredia, a 

cavalry officer and graduate of the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) as 

well as the Joint Staff College, Norfolk. Heredia and his officers were taken under the wing of 

Brigadier General Julian Burns, the AFSOUTH CJ5, or plans officer. He was more or less on loan 

to General Crouch during the transition period from AFSOUTH to IFOR. Burns is an extremely 

active officer, with a great deal of physical and intellectual energy and enthusiasm. As deputy 

commander of V Corps during the war in Kosovo, Burns was deeply involved in Task Force 

Hawk planning and execution. Along with Monty Meigs and John Sylvester, Burns became one 
108

of the “old Balkan hands.” He would later serve as General Shinseki’s CJ3, succeeding Major 

General Nix at LANDCENT/SFOR. 

Burns and Heredia formulated what might be called a broad campaign concept, which 

Heredia subsequently presented to the LANDCENT CJ5, a French colonel, who expressed 

some disquiet that such a document had been prepared outside of the headquarters itself. 

Nonetheless, a well-defined LANDCENT campaign concept focused on six essential activities 

evolved over time.2 These six activities were:

1. Deterring, stabilizing, and monitoring faction armed forces;

2. Contributing to a secure environment;

3. Managing returns;

4. Supporting the IPTF in development of a civil order based on a system of law and justice, 

enforced impartially by Entity police;

5. Support for scheduled elections; and,

6. Oversight of faction armed forces efforts in national de-mining efforts.

Notably, only the first and sixth involved matters entirely under Commander SFOR’s 

(COMSFOR’s) control. All were framed within the notion that the Entity politicians bore 

primary responsibility for compliance with the General Framework Agreement and that the 

international community was present only to enforce (as yet only the military provisions), tutor, 

or assist.3 Each activity had one contingency plan or more associated with it. 

The importance of the contingency planning function cannot be overestimated. In addition 

to identifying and preparing for sustained military efforts to achieve both military and civil 

ends, General Crouch drove his CJ3, General Nix, to anticipate every conceivable incidental 

possibility and to provide for it. Such things as the unanticipated detention of an indicted war 

criminal and his subsequent evacuation to The Hague required detailed advance preparation, 

even when such an event could only be accidental. In a situation where the management 

of almost every immediate incident was well within the capabilities of the multinational 

divisions, the process of ensuring systematic commandwide anticipation was a key function of 

the operational commander. Few contingency plans appear to have been passed on from the 

ARRC to IFOR/SFOR, and in light of the 50 percent reduction in personnel this is not entirely 

surprising.4 Priorities were adjusted in response to the pattern of events in country and without 

and in accordance with the priorities and general pattern of phases laid down by the SACEUR. 

The campaign plan was documented graphically and embedded in a family of focused plans. It 

was often found easier to gain consensus on graphical portrayals than on written products that 

had to be translated, and in which particular words could become stumbling blocks.

The major predictable strategic events in 1997 were the announcement of the Brcko arbitration 

decision and what became the fall municipal elections. What proved to be only the initial Brcko 

arbitration decision was postponed from December 1996 and announced in February 1997. 

Because of the town’s strategic position at the hinge of the two halves of the Republica Srpska, 

any decision on sovereignty over Brcko was potentially the single most dangerous threat to the 

continued peace. Maintaining a secure environment around Brcko consumed the major efforts 

of Multinational Division-North (MND-N) throughout 1997. It was and remained the US forces’ 

main effort. Elections were important because of their general strategic consequences. Selfsustaining implementation, the ground for international withdrawal with success, depended on 

ballots both occurring and producing the right kind of responsible leadership. 

SFOR-OSCE cooperation in organizing elections is a paradigm of the civil-military 

cooperation dilemma in Peace Operations. Elections were complex and manpower-intensive, 

and SFOR had to provide much of the planning, manning, and, most important, the command 
109

and control structure necessary for execution.5 The OSCE simply lacked the hard skills and 

materiel resources required to organize the practical side of anything as broad-based as a 

national election. The diplomats at the top were comfortable in ambiguity while the soldiers 

were obsessive about certainty, and the OSCE leadership naturally seemed to wish to avoid 

objective planning structures that would create goals against which they might then be held 

accountable. On the other hand, the military required timelines, identification of polling places, 

defined communications structures and routes, a training program, and a distribution scheme 

for ballots if the necessary manpower and materiel were to be assembled at the proper times 

and places to bring the event off. The military grew worried when they observed none of 

the necessary detailed planning was going on at the OSCE. They had to convince the OSCE 

diplomats that getting military officers involved in election planning was not a military power 

grab in the civilian implementation arena. As the OSCE struggled to find formulas agreeable 

to all parties, the date for the first countrywide municipal elections was moved in steps from 

November 1996 to September 1997. Moreover, the date turned out to fall in the midst of a 

dangerous constitutional struggle in the RS. SFOR planning, including US troop rotation 

schedules, had to be adjusted as each modification was made to the planned dates. 

General Crouch soon learned that interaction with the leaders of the implementation 

agencies was a central part of his job. Indeed, he estimates up to 50 percent of his time was tied 

up with “Principals” business. This started while IFOR was still in the Residency, and General 

Crouch could walk across the street to Carl Bildt’s offices. The Principals meetings, which were 

essentially information exchanges, were held three nights a week, or more often as required 

by events. Crouch normally attended with his Chief of Staff or a Deputy Commander. The 

High Representative’s lack of formal authority was obvious. Crouch, who retains great respect 

for the political talents of Carl Bildt, recognized that if the Dayton agenda were to succeed, 

he and Bildt would have to “take the point.” For the various diplomats, with no structure, 

no lines of authority, and no in-country responsibility, IFOR support was essential for the 

success of any initiative they might wish to pursue. The Principals group worked largely on 

the basis of personality. The measure of their success was maintaining cohesiveness in spite of 

disagreement. Recognizing the personality-based nature of the group, Crouch sought to further 

the sense of community by instituting informal dinners to build group cohesiveness and unity, 

as opposed to an environment where the members were continuously surprising each other 

with uncoordinated initiatives. 

Outside, Crouch and Bildt were the face of the implementation community. Bildt, a gifted 

politician and negotiator, displayed great persistence in pursuing his agenda, while Crouch, 

by his presence at the High Representative’s side, provided the implied threat of enforcement. 

Practically, this meant that often the NATO commander found himself in endless meetings 

with faction leaders over seemingly minor issues that threatened overall success. One 9-hour 

meeting was typical. The negotiators were the High Representative, his Deputy, COMSFOR, 

the Croatian Defense Minister, and various Federation faction officials, with all trying to agree 

on police uniforms for the “integrated” police force in Mostar. After 9 hours the negotiations 

had gone nowhere; when they left the room, the negotiators were confronted with television 

cameras and persistent reporters. In a piece of what Crouch calls masterful theater, without 

hesitation Bildt stepped to the microphones and blithely reported on progress in the meeting.

Beyond these political priorities, SFOR continued to help economic reconstruction by 

opening and securing transportation links. SFOR provided about 50 staff planners to help 

the OSCE prepare for elections and supplied lawyers and reservists with police experience 

to help the IPTF better organize. SFOR officers worked with the UNHCR to try to develop a 

coordinated method for promoting returns without upsetting the still fragile security in the 

countryside. Of course much of the contract labor done for NATO forces poured money into 
110

the local economies, and SFOR’s Civil-Military Integration Task Force proved adept at finding 

investment opportunities for COMSFOR to promote with various international donors. These, 

in turn, complemented the more direct actions of tactical commanders in the multinational 

divisions. 

One of the responsibilities of the SFOR Commander involved meeting with visiting senior 

representatives and members of the governments of the 35 troop-providing nations. These 

worthies passed through SFOR headquarters in a steady stream, each requiring the commander’s 

personal attention. Many wished only to be helpful and become better informed about the 

situation of the troops they had entrusted to NATO command. Others, on occasion, came with 

specific advice not necessarily in conformity with the guidance provided collectively by the 

North Atlantic Council, which, strictly speaking, was the source of policy for all the NATO forces 

in Bosnia. Officials of the US Department of State were particularly active in seeking to influence 

directly the actions of the NATO military commander. Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and 

Robert Gelbard, the latter the Special Representative of the President of the United States, were 

both prone to give instructions directly to COMSFOR that might or might not be in conformity 

with those of the North Atlantic Council, or even with those transmitted through the US military 

chain of command via the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Crouch observes that both Secretary 

of Defense Perry and Secretary of Defense Cohen, who succeeded Perry in January 1997, were 

sensitive to the prerogatives of the North Atlantic Council.6 General Joulwan, with whom 

Crouch spoke daily, had excellent connections with Washington and provided what cover he 

could. Joulwan also ensured that his subordinate in Sarajevo stayed focused on Brussels for 

guidance and remained within the agreed NATO policy limits when conflicting direction was 

given by visiting national dignitaries.

The SFOR Commander was especially challenged to maintain his separation from a major 

US national program called “Train and Equip.” Train and Equip was designed to rearm and 

upgrade the military forces of the Federation, particularly the Bosniac element.7 Train and Equip 

was an initiative with roots deep in the US Congress and the US domestic political environment 

of the mid-1990s. This was an environment in which, Carl Bildt observed, “President 

Itzetbegovic of Bosnia seemed to enjoy greater support . . . than did President Clinton.”8 During 

the war, Congressional Republicans, led by presidential hopeful Bob Dole and joined by some 

prominent Democrats like Joe Biden of Delaware and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, had exerted 

great pressure on the President to lift (or ignore) the general UN arms embargo in favor of 

the Bosnian Muslims--“to give them the ability,” they argued, “to defend themselves.”9 The 

President resisted this pressure, at least publicly, although there is some evidence that by 1995 

the US was involved in efforts to put weapons into Muslim hands as well as to train the Croat 

Army using a US defense contractor, Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI).10 At 

Dayton, the agreement to provide arms and training to the Bosnian Federation, particularly the 

Muslim faction forces, was used to win the final agreement of Bosniac President Izetbegovic. 

The United States also used its support to the Bosniac units as leverage to force the Muslim 

faction to expel Iranian and Afghan irregulars who had come to Bosnia during the war and to 

force greater unity on the Federation armed forces.11 Still, the US Department of Defense and 

most of the NATO allies opposed the program called Train and Equip.12 To make it politically 

acceptable, Train and Equip was made part of a process designed to reduce the strength of all 

faction forces to a point where none threatened the others. This was the goal of Annex 1B of 

the General Framework Agreement, the Agreement on Regional Stabilization. Holbrooke calls 

the combined effort Buildup and Build-down.13 Most European governments found Train and 

Equip counterproductive. On one hand, the US State Department expected COMSFOR at least 

not to create roadblocks to the Train and Equip Program. On the other, the alliance expected 

firm, evenhanded enforcement of the provisions of the Dayton Accord. Doing both was often 
111

difficult.

The Train and Equip Program would require its own history. What was important to 

NATO commanders was that it was a unilateral US initiative, deliberately kept separate from 

any connection with SFOR. MPRI was now hired to build up the Federation armed forces. 

Ambassador James Pardew, a retired US Army colonel who had been a DOD representative 

at Dayton and, coincidentally, General Meigs’ former neighbor, was appointed to administer 

the program for the Department of State. After some initial problems, Train and Equip got 

underway in December 1996, after General Crouch had assumed command of NATO forces in 

Bosnia.14 

Simply put, General Crouch’s difficulty was that, as NATO commander, he did not (indeed 

could not) acknowledge any role in a program of doubtful acceptability to his allies. The solution 

was that he held the Croat and Bosniac faction militaries (the Serbs were not included in Train 

and Equip) wholly responsible for complying with the Dayton Accords and for any deviations 

resulting from Train and Equip. They (the Bosniacs) weren’t up to it. As a result, SFOR troops 

seized some Train and Equip ammunition unaccounted for by the Bosniac recipients. That 

created a problem with the Department of State about US military officers impeding a national 

policy. Ambassador Pardew proved to be an abrasive interlocutor in no way sympathetic to 

the military’s position. General Crouch’s difficulties were by no means mitigated by the fact 

that the two most prominent contractors provided by MPRI were retired Generals Carl Vuono, 

the former US Army Chief of Staff, and Crosbie “Butch” Saint, former Commander in Chief, US 

Army Europe and Seventh Army, and Crouch’s old mentor.

The most difficult situation came in March 1997 when it was decided to have MPRI build 

a modern training center for the Federation armies near Livno/Glamoc, bordering the ZOS. 

In March, a request for permission to build came to COMSFOR from Mr. Ante Jelavic, the 

Federation Defense Minister.15 At that time, SFOR was having serious problems managing 

inter-Entity conflict along the Entity boundary and the ZOS. Now the Federation, which 

seemed to be conducting a strategy of strategic returns into the Serbian Entity, wanted to create a 

training ground that would deny Serb returnees access to their homes in the federation (prewar 

Glamoc had been 79 percent Serb), would have range fans intruding into the ZOS, and would 

cut a secondary route that crossed the IEBL.16 In addition, there were concerns over the extent 

to which training conducted at such a location would be compatible with an agreement on 

confidence and security building measures made in Vienna in January 1996. Although SFOR was 

responsible for oversight of the faction militaries, many of these issues fell under the competence 

of the international community, particularly the High Representative, OSCE, and UNHCR. 

That was essentially General Crouch’s response when he responded to Mr. Jelavic on 5 June. 

Crouch took diplomatic cover behind the international community. He told Jelavic that as long 

as the expansion took place within the strictures of Annex 1A, and the Federation obtained approval 

of the other International Agencies for the issues under their competence, SFOR would not object to the 

project.17 The obligation to resolve these issues rested with the Federation Government. The 

Federation officials replied that they would take care of the matters identified.18 

The problems identified by General Crouch, particularly those associated with compensation 

for dispossessed Serbs, were not quickly resolved, and SFOR could not evade its obligations 

as the international agent responsible for faction military actions. Inevitably, COMSFOR 

continued to bear the brunt of US dissatisfaction whenever there was a hiccup in the process. 

The range complex was opened finally in early 1998, though there continued to be problems 

with the Federation complying with their obligations to the displaced Serbs far beyond General 

Crouch’s tour of duty.19 By then, the SFOR commander had begun to track the progress of Train 

and Equip on a regular basis. This was done, on the one hand, because General Shinseki (who 

succeeded General Crouch) was concerned that Train and Equip would go too far in adjusting 
112

the balance of factional power and, on the other, because each time there was a problem, it had 

a major impact on the COMSFOR. At the same time, the COMSFOR’s ability to influence Train 

and Equip indirectly provided him another pressure point by which he could influence the 

leadership of the faction armed forces. Train and Equip remained an operational nuisance for 

some time to come, whatever its strategic value.

The pattern of events from December 1996 to July 1997 would be mixed. Since no spring 

military offensive occurred, the threat was largely discounted by outside observers. Restoring 

and securing roads and railroads was taken pretty much for granted as well. Clearly, the 

internationally mandated process of minority returns had become the new battleground in the 

ZOS and elsewhere, and the international community would have to develop new methods 

for gaining compliance with the mandates and the provisions of the General Framework 

Agreement. February 1997 would be a particularly dark period, with police shootings in Mostar 

threatening to destroy the Federation just as the Brcko arbitration threatened to pull down the 

broader Dayton structure. With the armies under control, new enemies became prominent, in 

particular the Entity police. With its new authority, the IPTF had to become better organized. 

But SFOR itself had to become more closely associated with IPTF actions to provide the required 

muscle to back up the orders of the unarmed international police monitors. 

The internal political situation continued to deteriorate in the Republika Srpska. The 

international community would back President Biljana Plavsic in her struggle with the Pale 

hardliners, a struggle that would dominate their energies through January 1998. Aside from 

providing most of the useful intelligence to the international community on the development 

of events, SFOR would become increasingly practiced in applying the threat of force in critical 

locations to create the circumstances in which Plavsic’s own political skills could succeed in 

a ruthless struggle for power. Finally, in a defining action on General Joulwan’s final day as 

SACEUR, NATO, or some of its members, undertook a course of action that NATO would 

continue to deny represented a change of policy, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding: 

member forces of the international body began to pursue and arrest those indicted for war 

crimes. The manner in which this sea change in policy came about is instructive both as to 

how NATO functions institutionally and how the international condominium, increasingly if 

reluctantly involved in running the Bosnian protectorate, worked.

January and February 1997 were difficult months for the international community in Bosnia. 

The struggle over refugee returns and the conflict in Mostar continued to demand attention. 

Minority returns to the Croat-dominated region of western Bosnia were resisted by a steady 

process of home burnings and beatings. In the eastern ZOS, the issue in Gajevi was rejoined, 

this time without participation of Muslim soldiers. The international community found itself 

ill-postured to meet the new challenges.

The restrictions on returns into the ZOS imposed at Gajevi had been lifted on 26 November 

1996. Screening of refugees was reimposed, and to ensure refugees were not used to achieve 

Federation or Muslim faction ends the stipulation was made by the Principals that “by signing 

their application to return, refugees and displaced persons accept to be subject to the laws of 

the receiving entity, in line with the Procedure. Returnees must know that police of the entities 

have the right and authority to police their side of the ZOS, as laid down in the Procedure.”20 

The following day, 27 November 1996, General Crouch held his first and only IFOR Joint 

Military Commission Meeting with the faction armed forces commanders.21 The principal 

purpose of the meeting was to set the terms of his relationship with them and, more particularly, 

to establish the point that his British Deputy Commander for Operations, Lieutenant General 

Roderick Cordy-Simpson, would be their routine point of contact. The commander intended 

to become involved with them only as the court of last resort. This change was necessary to 

compensate for loss of the intermediate buffer heretofore provided by Lieutenant General 
113

Walker, as COMARRC. The Deputy Commander for Operations was to assume COMARRC’s 

role with regard to managing factional military affairs.

 General Crouch had four points for the Bosnian military leaders. The first was that the 

policies and procedures in place remained in effect. He then addressed the ongoing problems 

with returns, and insisted that, as faction leaders, the military commanders had a responsibility 

to help prevent incidents such as that at Gajevi. He indicated strongly that he would not tolerate 

breaches of the General Framework Agreement or threats to his soldiers, and he directed the 

faction military commanders to see to it that their forces did not become involved in or support 

future incidents. He addressed the whole issue of freedom of movement as a major irritant, 

both to the population and the international community, and he reiterated the responsibility of 

the faction armed forces to make progress in removing the millions of mines laid throughout 

the country.22 One of the last AFSOUTH/ARRC initiatives had been to institute a policy that 

noncooperation in mine removal would be grounds for imposing a ban on a unit’s training and 

movement, essentially confining it to barracks. Crouch continued to enforce this mandate and 

also saw to it that the faction armed forces were properly trained for the task.

Gajevi and Mostar were the bellwethers of the international program that winter, played 

out against a backdrop of small incidents of returnee house burnings across the countryside, 

particularly in Drvar and the Croat triangle of Capljina, Stolac, and Mostar in the Federation. 

The second incident at Gajevi began on Saturday, 18 January 1997, a day after the Deputy 

High Representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner, and General Crouch dispatched a joint 

letter to the faction political leaders. The letter expressed dissatisfaction with the pattern of 

destruction of homes designed to impede return of refugees. The letter pointed to the irony that 

the international community was being asked to pay for reconstruction while this destruction 

continued.23 The same day the letter was issued, Crouch’s Deputy Commander for Operations, 

Lieutenant General Cordy-Simpson, held the first SFOR Joint Military Commission Meeting 

at Ilidza. Cordy-Simpson issued a new set of Commander’s Instructions to the Parties, gave 

new instructions for clearing mines and reducing the number of faction cantonment sites, and 

announced a suspension of the SFOR confiscation policy to give the faction armed forces a 

period of grace to get their weapons accounts in order. 

The key point was the issue of an updated volume of Instructions to the Parties or ITPs. These 

documents were of central importance to the Dayton process. First developed under IFOR to 

supplement and fill in the sometimes vague provisions of the General Framework Agreement, 

they represented the law for the Entity Armed Forces as laid down by the NATO Commander 

under his authority from Annex 1A. They indicated explicitly what the NATO command would 

enforce, and they were nonnegotiable. In a practical sense, they were the final expression of 

the military mandate.24 By issuing a new set of instructions, General Crouch indicated both 

continuity and a tightening up of premises to accompany the change from IFOR to SFOR.

On the issue of mine clearing, SFOR issued new and stricter guidelines that set an acceptable 

rate of removal to be achieved to avoid sanctions on training and movement. The reduction of 

cantonment sites was designed both to reflect the demobilization of the faction armies and to 

accommodate the diminished ability of SFOR (compared to IFOR) to conduct inspections. A 

goal of 25 percent fewer sites was indicated. The suspension of confiscation policy was intended 

to allow the factions to get their holdings under control where they had not done so in the rush 

of events the previous year.25 The next evening, there was an incident at Gajevi.

The road from Celic to Gajevi and Koraj ran past Russian Checkpoint 34A in the Federation 

portion of the ZOS. Late in the evening of 18 January 1997, at about 2230, a bridge along the road 

near the checkpoint was destroyed.26 Another explosion occurred on the 21st on the Serb side of 

the ZOS. That same day, the UNHCR spokesman at the combined press conference in Sarajevo 

announced the planned return the next day of 36 internationally screened Bosniac families to 
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Gajevi. 

On the morning of the 22nd, the day of their arrival, five Bosniacs arrived to assess the route 

through the ZOS to Gajevi. That same day, a US patrol from the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, in 

the Russian sector, observed what they believed to be 8 to 10 Serb police setting up a remotely 

detonated mine. The police fled when observed. Soon, a group of 20 Muslims were reported to 

have gathered on the Celic side of the checkpoint and 30 Serb hecklers on the Serb side. A US 

officer reported seeing a grenade in the Serb crowd, but it could not be found. The Serb crowd 

reportedly grew to about 200 shortly before noon. The number of Bosniac returnees rose to 

about 70. SFOR officers started to negotiate the withdrawal of both groups to cool the situation. 

The Muslims departed. The Serbs remained. The Russian brigade commander approached 

the Lopare mayor. (Lopare is the next large town beyond Koraj. In the nature of RS politics, 

the Lopare mayor could exert authority over Koraj.) At noon, General Meigs arrived at the 

checkpoint. Flares were seen on the Serb side. Reconnaissance reported 110 Muslims on the 

Federation side of the checkpoint. At 1230, the Bosniacs began to repair the damaged bridge. 

General Meigs now met with the Lopare officials, and the crowds on both sides dispersed 

when officials from Lopare and Celic came to the checkpoint. By 1345, the bridge was repaired. 

General Meigs called General Cordy-Simpson to request a meeting with the Serb regional police 

chief and the RS Interior Minister, Dragan Kijac, to emphasize the importance of their good 

behavior. Kijac held authority over the RS police, which in contrast to those of the Federation 

were centrally organized.27 Kijac was also a principal Karadzic ally. 

At 1715, General Meigs ordered unescorted Serb police removed from the ZOS as a 

consequence of the explosions and mine-planting incidents. The written instruction signed by 

General Meigs announcing a new restricted zone said specifically:

Effective immediately, no civilian police are authorized within this Temporary Restricted Zone 

without IPTF escort. Activities in the ZOS without IPTF escort will result in confiscation of any 

weapons and vehicles and in the possible detention of police.

This action in no way affects the ability of Republika Srpska police to conduct normal police 

activities. Republic of Srpska officials remain responsible for the actions of their citizens in the 

ZOS.28

Later, the Serbs claimed this instruction was responsible for the absence of RS police in the 

ensuing confrontation.

A joint Russian/US command post was established at Checkpoint 34A. Lieutenant Colonel 

Robin Swan, commander of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, was the reinforcing US commander 

in case the Russians, in whose zone Gajevi was sited, required assistance. The following day, 

Muslims began clearing mines in Gajevi.

On the 24th, the Muslims from Celic began moving construction materials into Gajevi. 

Dialogue continued between the division leadership and the local political officials. On the 

25th, the first prefabricated house was raised. On the 26th, an organized mob of Serbs, which 

grew quickly to more than 200, formed in Koraj on the Serb side and began moving in three 

groups to Gajevi. At 1130, they attacked a Muslim worker driving a tractor, beat him, and stole 

his vehicle. Apache helicopters from the MND-N reaction force arrived on scene and began 

to hover over Gajevi, filming the developing situation. The Serb mob began tearing down 

assembled houses and began beating another Muslim worker with boards and branches. An 

American sergeant, Staff Sergeant Robert Canarios, B Company, fired a warning shot to stop 

the beating, and Lieutenant Colonel Swan went into the mob with his interpreter to begin to 

separate the Serbs from the Muslims. Swan’s action was decisive. General Crouch, who saw it 

on film, later told Swan not to do anything like that again, pointing out that at that moment Swan 
115

was the commander holding the whole NATO operation together at the point of confrontation. 

Swan observes that the leveled rifle of one of his NCOs covered him throughout, an action that 

seemed to have been well understood by the mob.29 

The Muslims were withdrawn to Celic by SFOR, and the Serb crowd began to melt away. By 

1600, Gajevi was reported to be quiet. Colonel Thompson, the brigade commander, repaired to 

Lopare to meet with the Serb police chief. Lieutenant Colonel Swan went to Celic at the request 

of the Russian deputy commander to confer with the Muslim leaders. A commitment was 

obtained from the Muslims to postpone further construction for 48 hours.30 

The Principals met at SFOR headquarters to review the Apache film of the incident and 

to coordinate their united position.31 The response at theater level was to convene a meeting 

with Serb officials in Banja Luka, in particular with President Plavsic and Minister Kijac.32 The 

international community demanded the suspension of the regional police chief but allowed 

themselves to be satisfied with the promise that he would be kept away from the area of Gajevi by 

other duties. They demanded a commission of inquiry into the events at Gajevi and punishment 

of those responsible. Joint IPTF-RS police patrols were to begin at once, and President Plavsic 

was to instruct local officials to cooperate fully with the International Housing Commission. The 

attempt to resolve the Gajevi problem quickly became ensnared in the growing political schism 

between President Plavsic, whose authority was based in Banja Luka and the western RS, and the 

Koradzic allies in Pale, among whom numbered prominently the RS Interior Minister, Mr. Kijac, 

and Serb Tri-President Krajisnik. The situation stimulated discussion of the need to get the 

Serb police under control, including the paramilitary RS Specialist Police Brigade (called MUPs

after the Serb Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Poslova, or Ministry of the Interior). SFOR would bring 

the MUPs under Dayton Annex 1A supervision in the summer following difficulties in the Banja 

Luka Special Police unit related to the RS political split.33 Before that could be done, however, a 

good bit of groundwork had to be laid, and the Special Representative of the Secretary General 

Kai Eide, who was initially opposed to what he saw as an intrusion on his responsibility for the 

International Police Task Force, had to be won over.

There was yet another dustup in Gajevi in late February and early March 1997. According to a 

report from the NATO Secretary General to the UN Secretary General, the problem started on 26 

February when a Bosniac was arrested by Serb police.34 That same day, explosions demolished 

four Bosniac prefabricated houses. Still later, three Bosnian Serbs were kidnapped and beaten 

by 15 armed Bosniacs, apparently in retribution. The Serbs were released and taken to the 

SFOR checkpoint near Celic on 1 March. The next day, a mob of 150 Serbs moved into Gajevi 

from Koraj and burned nine more homes. Outnumbered SFOR troops tried to save two other 

houses. RS police arrived too late to protect the houses from destruction. On 3 March, a Bosniac 

crowd blocked SFOR troops at the bridge by Checkpoint 34A. On 4 March, SFOR increased 

its presence and again declared a restricted zone. At the end of the period of restriction, on 11 

March, a crowd of 30 Serbs destroyed the last prefabricated homes.

Senator Strom Thurmond, Chairman of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, asked 

General Joulwan why SFOR had not restrained the Serb mob and kept them from burning down 

the homes. Joulwan’s response, provided later and almost assuredly staffed internationally as 

well as in US channels, is revealing.

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military mission has contributed to a secure 

environment, the mission does not include civil law enforcement, including the protection of 

civilian property. Undertaking civil law enforcement activities would be a considerable expansion 

of the mission and a fundamental change in North Atlantic Treaty Organization policy regarding 

the development of the General Framework Agreement on Peace.

The house burning incident at Gajevi was a matter of civil law enforcement. It is important to note 
116

that the structures burned were not occupied and no human life was threatened. It was purely a 

case of protection of civilian property, which is the responsibility of local civilian police, and beyond 

the scope of the Stabilization Force mission. In this regard, Stabilization Force Rules of Engagement 

permit the use of force to protect against immediate threats to human life, but do not authorize the use of 

force to protect civilian property. While this incident is regrettable, the Stabilization Force acted in 

accordance with sound North Atlantic Treaty Organization policy that recognizes the scope of their 

mission, and the bounds of the rules of engagement. [Emphasis added]35

Carl Bildt had identified the broader, underlying difficulty at a press conference the previous 

November. Challenged with an assertion that NATO should secure the returns of displaced 

persons across Bosnia, Bildt had disagreed strongly.

If you take [a] family into [a] tank, you can drive that tank back to the house, you can help them into 

their house. We can have the tank staying there as well. But not really for a very long time, or can 

you?

I mean[,] there’s no way I think that in [the] long term [you] can secure conditions by outside force 

alone. This will have to be done through political changes, then we can go in, the way that is now 

done in the ZOS, try to help things along. But the solution to the question of security can never long 

term be the presence of tanks from foreign countries. It is simply not going to work.36

SFOR could do what SFOR had done. It could provide general area security. It could isolate 

an area once trouble broke out and separate factions once engaged. It could protect life when 

threatened. It could provide evidence to fix responsibility, and for a short duration it could 

provide the additional presence required to allow tensions to cool down. It could pressure 

senior Entity leaders to make their local subordinates behave, at least to the extent that the 

senior leaders had authority over the locals and could be punished themselves if they were 

uncooperative. Given its broad responsibilities, however, SFOR could not occupy every flashpoint village in the ZOS, much less the countryside. It could manage crises, but not prevent 

them. That responsibility would have to be assumed by the Entity police, supervised by the 

IPTF watchers.37 Meantime, problems in the ZOS were overtaken by a shooting in Mostar, on 

Liska Street.

The political balance in Bosnia was premised on creating an approximate equality of strength 

between the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. The balance was recognized to 

exist within a situation of external sponsors: Croatia, in the case of at least the Croat minority of 

the Federation; and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in the case of the RS. The cohesion of the 

Federation, called into being by the United States in 1994, was critical to this balance.38 Markedly 

tenuous, it was based on little more than a shared hostility toward the Serbs on the part of Croats 

and Muslims, and it was rendered even more tenuous by the Bosnian Croats’ desire to join a 

united Croatia, a desire that mirrored the RS Serbs’ wish to incorporate into a greater Serbia. In 

no place was the cohesion of the Federation put to a greater test than in Mostar.

During the war, administration of Mostar had been taken over by the European Union. In 

January, the High Representative and the international constituency he represented assumed 

responsibility for the divided city on the same basis as the rest of Bosnia.39 Mostar had been a 

large multiethnic city before the war. By 1997, it was divided about equally between Muslims 

and Croat communities, with each in its own district. The Serbs had been driven out. The Croats 

wanted Mostar to be their ethnic capital or at least the capital of the Federation. Some Federation 

offices were located there. In early 1997, a mafia-like Croat criminal element was engaged in 

clearing Muslim residents out of the Croat half of the divided city. Throughout the winter, 

Muslim residents were subjected to a pattern of forcible evictions, sometimes involving men in 

Bosnian-Croat military uniforms, though evidence of organized factional military involvement 
117

seems to have been unconvincing.40

For COMSFOR, dealing with Mostar presented special challenges resulting from the 

differences between the ethnic nature of Multinational Division-South East (MND-SE) on one 

hand, and its two parallel organizations, Multinational Divisions-Southwest (MND-SW) and 

North (MND-N), on the other. MND-SE headquarters was a more polyglot and multilingual 

organization than its two more homogeneous peers. While heading a nominal French framework 

division headquarters, the Commander of MND-SE had a German chief of staff plus Italian and 

German assistant division commanders. The division had Italian, French, German, and Spanish 

units, each of which had different ways of dealing with the problems of peace operations. In 

Mostar there were a British administrator, a French NATO military commander, and four 

different troop nationalities, all of which made for a very complex mix. 

Matters came to a head on 10 February 1997. A Muslim procession, intending to visit a 

cemetery on the Croat side of the de facto ethnic boundary, was harassed and then taken under 

fire by Croat police. One Muslim was killed and a number were wounded.41 The Principals, 

in particular the Principal Deputy High Representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner, General 

Crouch, Acting Police Commissioner Wasserman, and Ambassador Sir Martin Garrod, Head 

of OHR South in Mostar, responded with outrage and demanded an independent IPTF 

investigation and trial of the perpetrators.42 SFOR increased its presence in Mostar to avoid 

repetition of the incident and, in combination with the IPTF, began returning illegally evicted 

residents to their apartments and removing the checkpoints within the city that divided the two 

communities. As in Gajevi, SFOR camera teams filming the incident provided key evidence to 

identify individual perpetrators. On the 24 February the Principals transmitted the results of the 

IPTF investigation to Tri-President Izetbegovic and Federation President Zubak with demands 

for specific action to punish individual perpetrators.43 

The clampdown in Mostar was not without response. Shortly after midnight, on 20 February, 

Spanish troops were shot at with a small rocket-propelled antitank rocket. Later, Italian troops 

had a grenade thrown at them. The attack on the Spaniards was the first acknowledged 

attack on SFOR soldiers.44 SFOR joined with the Office of the High Representative and the 

IPTF in forming a Mostar Security Coordination Group that met daily, with members of the 

organization manning a 24-hour command post in the Office of the High Representative in 

Mostar.45 By April, a joint Muslim-Croat police force was off to a wobbly beginning in central 

Mostar. As a consequence of the Mostar incident, General Crouch instructed USAREUR to send 

Brigadier General Don Ryder, then Deputy Commander, 21st TAACOM, down to Sarajevo to 

serve as his Special Adviser on Police Matters. Ryder, a Military Police officer, had served as 

Crouch’s Executive Officer for a time and would be involved in subsequent studies of how to 

better organize the IPTF for their difficult mission.

Ultimately, a trial was held for Croat police implicated in the Liska Street shooting, but it 

was a farce producing no proportional sanctions.46 A more effective step was to place sufficient 

diplomatic pressure on President Tudjman of Croatia so that his police arrested two Croat 

gangsters, known as “Tuta” and “Stella,” who were apparently behind much of the mayhem in 

Mostar.47 During the war, Mladen “Tuta” Naletilic commanded an irregular unit recruited from 

around Mostar called the Convicts Battalion (Kaznjenicka Bojna). Vinco “Stella” Martinovic was 

his subordinate. Small wonder that the day after the Mostar shooting, Carl Bildt observed that 

“the south is in flames, the north is about to explode, and everything appears to be collapsing 

in the center.”48

Gajevi showed just how tenuous international control remained in the Republika Srpska. 

Mostar was the spark that could bring down the Federation. Moreover, on 14 February 1997, the 

decision of the international arbitration panel on Brcko was due. Brcko was where the Dayton 

Accord could most easily be unravelled because both Entities considered possession of Brcko 
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critical to their survival.

It had always been clear that Brcko was the most sensitive place in Bosnia, more so even 

than Sarajevo. Before the war, Brcko had been a multiethnic town in which Muslims formed the 

plurality. The town and surrounding region were subject to ethnic cleansing by the Serb forces 

during the war, and by 1997 the town was essentially a Serb enclave. Indeed, its population 

consisted largely of Serbs driven out of Croatia and Sarajevo. During the war and at Dayton, 

the area had been hotly contested. For the Federation, it represented an area many believed 

theirs by prior right, and its possession provided access to commerce with Europe, by boat 

along the Sava River and by road through Croatia and Hungary. The Serbs held only the town 

and its immediate environs, an area known as the Posavina Corridor. Possession of the narrow 

corridor enabled the continued viability of their Entity, for it was the only hinge connecting the 

two halves of the RS, the west dominated by Banja Luka and the east dominated by Pale. 

At Dayton, the final disposition of Brcko was the issue that almost broke the conference. The 

question was so contentious that the only solution was to submit it to binding arbitration at a 

time to be announced within a year.49 The decision was subsequently postponed from December 

1996 to February 1997. The decision was to be announced in Rome on 14 February, and both 

sides hinted darkly that failure by their side to prevail would mean war. General Crouch and 

General Meigs, in whose division sector Brcko lay, began to get ready for the after-effects of the 

arbitration decision almost as soon as they took command in Bosnia. 

In late fall 1996, while IFOR Headquarters was still located in the Residency above Sarajevo, 

General Drewienkiewicz learned that Roberts Owen, the US chairman of the Brcko Arbitration 

Panel, was coming to Bosnia. General Crouch invited Owen to IFOR for briefings on the politics, 

geography, and demographics of Brcko. Generals Crouch, Drewienkiewicz, and CordySimpson (who knew Brcko from a prior assignment as UNPROFOR Chief of Staff) plus various 

in-house experts on Brcko spent 2 days briefing Owen. Then General Crouch took the arbitrator 

to Camp McGovern in MND-North where General Meigs could brief him on the ground. Meigs 

took Owen on what was, apparently, the lawyer’s first visit to the town whose fate he held in 

his hands. Owen then departed. Crouch and Meigs followed the speculation on how the Panel 

would decide as well as they could and prepared for whatever outcome might result.50 

Crouch ordered Meigs to prepare to block all points of access into Brcko, and he worked with 

the Air Force to develop targets for air strikes around the city. Tactically, Meigs developed a 

plan for his two infantry battalions to isolate the town from reinforcement either from the RS or 

Serbia proper, or, conversely, to avoid a Muslim rush from Tuzla. Routes were reconnoitered. 

Movements were rehearsed. The division sectors were realigned to place the main north-south 

road from Zupanja to Sarajevo inside the sector of Robin Swan’s TF 1-26 Infantry. The objective 

was to preempt potential disrupters, that is, to achieve a Clausewitzian victory by the battle-notfought because its outcome was assured before the first shot.

The division plan called for Task Force 1-18 to provide the inner ring to isolate Brcko town. 

Swan’s unit, with Lieutenant Colonel Chris Frel’s 720th MPs under its operational control 

and employed as a maneuver unit, was to control the Zupanja-Sarajevo road, screen the area 

from General Mladik’s old headquarters at Han Pijesak to the town of Olavo on the highway, 

overwatch routes out of Zvornik, and be prepared to reinforce the Russians in the vital area of 

Bijeljina. Bijeljina was both the major link with Serbia and the home of the RS III Corps. Swan’s 

plan called for major simultaneous troop movements during the hours of darkness and, as it 

happened, in a driving snowstorm, to cut off every route to Brcko from the south. 

Both the Bosniacs and Serbs were restive. Indeed, on the 11th, the day after the Mostar 

shooting, General Crouch convened a special Joint Military Commission Meeting, chaired as 

usual by General Cordy-Simpson, to direct the faction armies to cease ongoing mobilizations of 

reservists and to restrict their units to their garrisons.51 Indication of the VRS mobilization had 
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been picked up by 1st Infantry Division troops as early as 7 February. Meigs had responded 

to indications of general unrest by having his aviation unit fly night patrols to provide a 

threat of observation during hours of darkness.52 Units under Meigs’ command intercepted 

weapons being moved in the Russian sector without authorization from what proved to be an 

unauthorized site. At first, General Cordy-Simpson and the SFOR Chief of the Faction Liaison 

Office (CFLO) disputed division analysis indicating a secret mobilization. Meigs’ assessment 

was eventually confirmed by President Plavsic on the 9th. Cordy-Simpson called General 

Meigs and cheerfully confessed that “you and your lot were cleverer than we were.”53 On the 

11th, an American unit found a Serb tank outside its cantonment area. The tank was seized and 

ordered destroyed.54

Politically, the fact that the two sides to the arbitration could not even agree on the issue to 

be decided was a bad sign. The Federation argued that the point in contention was possession 

of the entire prewar Brcko region while the Serbs believed it to be only the precise configuration 

of the existing IEBL.55 Ultimately, Roberts Owen imposed a nondecision. Owen’s ability to 

continue to find third alternatives to this Manichean question can only be called inspired. 

On the 14th, Owen decided in a manner quite different from that agreed to in the General 

Framework Agreement.56 He decided unilaterally, contrary to the requirement for decision by 

majority of the three commissioners (Owen and a representative of each Entity), and rather than 

rendering the required final judgment, said only that the issue would carry forward. But, more 

important, he said that in the meantime an international official would oversee the government 

of Brcko town. This officer would prepare the town for its final disposition by establishing 

conditions that favored creation of a local government that acted in accordance with the Dayton 

principles.57 The official was to head a fourth regional office of the High Representative (along 

with those for Brussels, Banja Luka, and Mostar). He was granted powers denied his nominal 

master. He was entitled to issue directives regarding the application of the General Framework 

Agreement to Brcko. He had the power to mandate laws and fire obstructionists. In short, the 

Serbs retained title for a while longer, but Brcko had become a US-led international protectorate 

in the divisional zone of MND-N.

Robin Swan’s troops moved out into the falling snow to their blocking positions at 2300 hours 

on 13-14 February 1997, the night before the decision. The next morning, Jim Rabon walked 

through the quiet Brcko streets with a Special Forces Joint Commission Observer (JCO) team. 

When he entered the police station, he found RS General Novica Simic, the commander of the 

Serb III Corps, there in battle dress. Major General Goran Saric, the commander of the RS Police 

Antiterrorist Brigade (RS Special Police or MUPs) and some of Simic’s commanders were with 

him. Simic had established a tactical command post with television, staff, and phones. Rabon 

found the Serbs pleased with the Owens decision that meant, in effect, they did not have to fight 

to retain the city. Simic, in fact, expressed their pleasure, saying they had known Rabon would 

want to be with them, and he kissed Rabon in the Slavic way of expressing emotion. General 

Simic also told Rabon that US intelligence was too good, and he later admitted that Meigs’ 

moves had successfully preempted his plans for Brcko.58 At Camp McGovern, just outside 

of Brcko, General Meigs was visited by the RS Minister of the Interior Kijac and his deputy, 

General Karisik. At Meigs’ invitation, they waited for a coincidental visit by the Federation 

Interior Minister and the Tuzla Canton Chief of Police, their approximate opposite numbers 

from the other Entity. The officials carried on discussions described by Meigs as “cordial and 

matter of fact.” A US interpreter overheard a discussion in which the Federation Minister said, 

“From the helicopter you can see just how badly we damaged Bosnia, we really . . . ed it up.” 

Kijac shook his head and responded sadly, “I know.”59

US Ambassador Robert Farrand was duly appointed Brcko supervisor and Deputy High 

Representative. Bildt observed in his memoir that he (Bildt) was concerned about the legality 
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of the Owen decision, but “power and necessity are sometimes a law unto themselves, and we 

were faced with a situation in which the articles and clauses did not help much anyway.”60

Roberts Owen returned to the United States, and the Principals were left to explain the situation 

to the Entities. Not for the last time, an answer that did not satisfy one’s enemy was deemed to 

be adequate by the three contending parties. For now, Brcko remained quiet.

In the aftermath of Brcko, Gajevi, and Mostar, COMSFOR took two important steps. He 

convened a division commanders’ conference in March that focused on reviewing and applying 

the NATO Rules of Engagement (ROE) to ensure that, in light of these recent experiences and 

personnel changes, there was a common understanding of the rules of the game across the AOR. 

More important, these incidents gave impetus to a joint endeavor between General Crouch 

and Ambassador Kai Eide, the new UN Special Representative of the Secretary General, to do 

what was necessary to gain control over the various Bosnian police.61 This initiative produced 

close coordination between the unarmed IPTF teams, responsible for supervising the Dayton 

mandates concerning Entity police, and the well-armed military teams of IFOR. Success was 

to be achieved by joint planning and execution of a program of inspections of police stations 

throughout Bosnia; joint patrolling to remove illegal police checkpoints, heretofore a major 

impediment to freedom of movement; and most important, added emphasis on police reform, 

which in turn became a major issue in the growing battle for political control in the Republika 

Srpska. The success experienced in spring 1997 and thereafter demonstrated the absolute 

necessity for SFOR muscle to be visibly behind civil implementation efforts and NATO’s 

increased willingness to put it there.

The SFOR commanders’ conference was held during the afternoon of 19 March.62 The 

commander’s intention was to enhance uniformity of action within SFOR by providing the 

various commanders and staff officers a common foundation of understanding of the several 

terms of reference (General Framework Agreement, Declarations of the Peace Implementation 

Conferences or Councils, the NATO OPLAN, and the NATO ROE) under which SFOR operated. 

It was also intended to exercise thinking about applying the NATO ROE through use of a set of 

carefully crafted vignettes. The points of reference were the events in Gajevi and Mostar, which 

General Drewienkiewicz reviewed in some detail.63 The vignettes, based on applying ROE to 

selected peace support tasks (9 of 33 considered), were designed to distinguish when force could

(not so much should) be used and how, thus clarifying legally vague terms like “minimum force 

reasonably necessary.” Clearly, this discussion showed that, while NATO ROE were robust 

and detailed, they were complicated by their number and specificity. They required mediation 

before they were presented to the squad leaders and soldiers who had to employ them. The 

vignettes were also designed to provide reasonable clarity concerning the boundary between 

matters for which the IPTF held original jurisdiction and those for which SFOR should assume 

jurisdiction. Most notably, the SFOR Chief of Staff’s review of events in Gajevi and Mostar 

indicated that use of deadly force by SFOR troops could have been justified in both cases to 

prevent serous injury or loss of life. Equally notably, it was not used in either case, nor would 

it be at Drvar a year later.

As an additional agenda item, General Nix reviewed the existing SFOR policy on fixed 

NATO checkpoints, noting that the existence of Checkpoint 34A between Gajevi and Celic 

had contributed to friction at Gajevi by implying a degree of responsibility for protection of 

returnees that SFOR could not give. Acknowledging that fixed checkpoints had once been 

necessary to control of the ZOS, it was now determined that, except in special circumstances 

where COMSFOR was willing to assert special status (a declared intention to protect a site or 

facility), fixed checkpoints should no longer be set up. Rather, SFOR control should be based 

on less predictable temporary presence, active patrolling, and a credible response force that 

could not be maintained if forces were tied down to a large number of fixed sites. SFOR was to 
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become a more mobile constabulary-type force as it reduced its profile in conjunction with the 

anticipated force reductions yet to come under the planned 18-month program.64

The more practical outcome of the Gajevi and Mostar affairs was the impetus given to 

integrating SFOR support with IPTF programs. There were, of course, several areas where 

the two organizations had always overlapped. First, SFOR intelligence could be enhanced by 

dialogue with the unarmed UN policemen in police stations and neighborhoods. Second, SFOR 

was charged explicitly with protecting IPTF members when they were threatened, so SFOR 

had a clear interest in knowing what they were up to in advance, even in being on site to avoid 

difficulties when they were reasonably predictable. Third, with the faction armies under control 

in their garrisons, the police had became the force of choice through which the hardline factions 

in both Entities exercised control over their populations and obstructed the less popular parts of 

the General Framework Agreement, either by action or inaction. Unless the international police, 

who were unarmed but responsible for oversight, could use the muscle of SFOR, which was 

capable of coercion but not responsible for police misbehavior, progress would remain glacial. 

After all, as demonstrated by the events in Gajevi where local police did not do their jobs, SFOR 

inevitably got involved in the problem one way or another. 

If the IPTF could get the local police authorities to maintain civil order and adhere to Western 

standards of police work, SFOR would not be caught in resettlement clashes, with its combat 

troops mediating dangerous incidents with hostile crowds. In addition, General Joulwan 

pointed out that requiring police to do the policing would keep SFOR, unlike its UNPROFOR 

predecessor, from being tied down in cities and would allow the military to continue to control 

the countryside.65 SFOR’s seizure and sanction authority under Annex 1A of the Dayton Accords 

would stimulate civil police organizations to comply with IPTF programs. The cooperation of 

both agencies would put the responsibility for effective and just civil policing functions on the 

proper shoulders, those of the Entities’ civil police. COMSFOR supported expanding the IPTF 

mandate and increased manning. In a series of activities throughout the spring that represent 

a process of adaptation more than a series of isolated events, SFOR and the IPTF began to act 

together to extend international control over the various bodies of police. In so doing, they 

exacerbated the political conflict in the RS. To avoid a total political breakdown, COMSFOR 

was inevitably drawn in to support directly the efforts of the High Representative.

The notion of SFOR-IPTF cooperation was not exactly new. SFOR and the IPTF long 

had cooperated locally in reducing illegal checkpoints and conducting inspections of police 

stations, which were believed to be the source of many local security problems. What began 

in spring 1997 was the increased extent and degree of involvement, what Carl Bildt called “a 

far more assertive approach,”66 as well as the enhanced effectiveness of the cooperation, which 

became systematic and highly successful. Shortly after the incidents in Mostar and Gajevi, 

NATO Secretary General Solana indicated at a press conference that NATO’s top priorities for 

civil implementation were refugee return, reform of the civil police, and arms control.67 Two 

days before, he had reported to the UN Secretary General that a key step in improving the 

security situation was strengthening the IPTF and developing a systematic program to retrain 

and restructure the local police and compel them to do their duty.68 In May, Solana reported 

that during the intervening period SFOR and the IPTF had created a number of ad hoc joint 

working groups, an SFOR Law Enforcement Support Team, and an SFOR undertaking to 

track and analyze the networks of relationships underpinning Bosnian organized crime, in 

short a program of gathering police intelligence.69 As events in Mostar showed, that initiative 

was a matter of importance, particularly given the continuing involvement of extraterritorial 

governments in the shadowy world of Bosnian politics. (Intelligence was required in any event 

as part of the force protection program.) Two events stand out in this process of increasing 

security cooperation at the theater level in Bosnia: the security operation for the Pope’s visit to 
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Sarajevo in April 1997 and the announcement of a new checkpoint policy to govern all police in 

Bosnia in May. 

The Pope’s visit to Sarajevo was important politically because of the religious differences 

that polarized the factions. In Bosnia, Croats tended to be Roman Catholic; Serbs, Orthodox; 

and Bosniacs, Muslim. The leader of the world’s Roman Catholics was coming to the now 

largely Muslim capital of a still very tenuous multiethnic and multireligious state. His visit 

would cause thousands of Croats to journey to Sarajevo to see their Pope, as well as provide 

a pretext for Orthodox Serbs from the RS to revisit the city for whatever reason. Politically it 

provided the opportunity for all of the contending parties to demonstrate their willingness to 

cooperate on the world stage. The occasion also offered an opportunity for the Pope to issue a 

plea for reconciliation, which he did. 

Security was a major issue, and the international community placed the burden on the three 

factions, overseen by the IPTF, within a general security framework provided by SFOR. Given 

the general lack of trust in the abilities and professionalism of the faction police, the major 

burden rested on COMSFOR, all other declarations notwithstanding. The effort tested the 

ability of all the international and factional players to work together in a common enterprise 

for which the price of failure would have been incalculable. NATO troops carried a major 

burden. SFOR reported the involvement of 6,540 soldiers in increased road surveillance 

throughout the country, antisniper operations, which involved location of NATO anti-sniper 

teams on strategically located rooftops, emergency ordnance disposal teams, and manning of a 

network of observation posts in Sarajevo.70 SFOR established a command post to coordinate all 

participating agencies throughout the visit.

 That the visit was not without risk became evident on the day of the Pope’s arrival. A 

massive cache of explosives rigged for demolition was found on the Papal route into Sarajevo 

from the airport in an area reported cleared the night before. General Crouch visited the site 

and then proceeded to the airport with Carl Bildt to greet the Pontiff. Crouch recommended to 

the Papal Nuncio that the Pope be taken to the location of the scheduled Mass by helicopter, in 

light of the bomb discovery. The Pope himself said no. The decision was made to proceed as 

planned. The Pope traveled by road in his “Popemobile” from the airport down the road known 

during the war as “Sniper Alley.” General Crouch flew overhead in a helicopter, followed by an 

airborne rescue unit ready to respond if required. The ground movement was without incident. 

The Pope’s Mass, conducted under the watchful eyes of the SFOR Apaches, was a major success. 

The cooperation enjoyed by the IPTF and SFOR was then exploited by dispensing with one of 

the principal means of population control long employed by the faction police agencies, the 

ubiquitous police checkpoint.

In May, in conjunction with the High Representative and UN Special Representative, 

General Crouch and Manfred Seitner, the IPTF Commissioner, declared a joint policy to begin 

to enforce the General Framework Agreement prohibition on unregulated police checkpoints. 

The IPTF would find the checkpoints, and SFOR would enforce instructions to remove them. 71 

In some areas, IPTF patrols in commercial vehicles were followed by SFOR fighting vehicles to 

provide the appropriate suasion. Moreover, after the announcement that checkpoints were to 

be removed, any police operating them would be subject to immediate loss of their arms and 

identity cards, in effect, loss of their jobs. Interestingly enough, the requirement to seize identity 

cards became an issue with the US and French division commanders, who saw that requirement 

as an unnecessary provocation likely to expose their troops to risk. Their general conclusion was 

that the SFOR Commander had been stampeded by the international community into agreeing 

to the details of an action before he could examine all of its unintended consequences. The 

British generals and police officials were much less concerned. In retrospect, General Crouch, 

who obviously had the bit in his teeth for bringing the Entity police (particularly those of the 
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RS) under control, seems to have had a keener appreciation both of how far he might go without 

assuming unacceptable risk and of the new wind blowing in policy circles in the US and NATO. 

The division commanders may have been correct in their assessment, insofar as the objective 

of the action was simply to remove checkpoints. Operationally, however, the goal was to gain 

ascendancy over the RS police and to that end the more aggressive policy was not without its 

benefits.

SFOR certainly had authority in these matters under Annex 1A, specifically with the 

discretionary power “to observe and prevent interference with the movement of civilian 

populations, refugees, and displaced persons.”72 In fact, SFOR had long removed checkpoints 

on its own, and the problem was gradually diminishing in importance. Indeed, in May 1997, 

Secretary General Solana wrote that, since its transfer of authority in December 1996, SFOR had 

reported only 81 illegal checkpoints, about the same monthly rate as under IFOR.73 Still, with this 

new combined initiative, SFOR had crossed an established boundary by becoming intimately 

involved in what was generally a policing function. The initiative created a vertical continuity 

of international treaty enforcement to provide a safer environment and, not coincidentally, to 

undermine a vital tool of extremist population control. SFOR had also taken a step that markedly 

shored up IPTF authority by making it evident that COMSFOR would support the unarmed 

police observation force with action. The growing collective international involvement with 

the Entity police would reap an unanticipated benefit from a political realignment in the Serb 

Republic, as it seemed to exacerbate a developing split in the political structure guiding the 

future of that Entity.

It is difficult to pick a single event as the start of the RS political split. President Plavsic, 

whose power base was in Banja Luka, not Pale, was one of the leaders of the Serb abandonment 

of the prewar Bosnian Government. She was perhaps the key figure in the RS Government 

when the international community chose to get former President Karadzic out of RS political 

affairs.74 Her role in firing General Mladic in November 1996 has already been mentioned. In 

the spring of 1997, the RS political situation deteriorated sharply. According to Carl Bildt, the 

immediate issue was an intragovernmental “parallel” agreement between the governments of 

the Republika Srpska and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).75 The General Framework 

Agreement permitted such relationships, and one had been in place since 1994 between Croatia 

and the Federation.76 There were two problems with the new arrangement. The General 

Framework Agreement required approval of such extraordinary treaties by the Bosnian Central 

Government. The Serbs had not sought such (nor, for that matter, had the Federation, though 

of course their agreement predated the Dayton arrangements). Of more immediate importance 

was that President Plavsic was bypassed in this case, and the undertaking with the FRY was 

signed in March by Serb-Tri-Presidency member, Krajisnik, constitutionally a member of the 

State Government, not the Entity. The treaty thus had great significance regarding the question 

of who spoke internationally for the Republika Srpska. 

Pressure on Plavsic became so great that SFOR intervened to prevent her ouster by Pale 

hardliners. In response to the High Representative’s request, on a Saturday in March 1997, 

General Crouch flooded Pale with Italian troops from MND-Southeast to intimidate the whole 

shadowy Pale political structure and thus curtail Karadzic’s and his allies’ ability to manipulate 

the Srpska Demokratska Stranka (Serb Democratic Party SDS) Executive Committee in a way 

harmful to the Entity president. According to Bildt, SFOR then took Plavsic back to Banja Luka 

by helicopter to ensure her safety. 77 

In May, Bildt instructed Plavsic not to return to Pale in response to a summons from 

Karadzic.78 He further made a point at the Sintra PIC to have Plavsic, not Krajisnik, speak as 

leader of the RS. In the middle of the month, when the Principals met with Plavsic, RS Prime 

Minister Klickovic (another hardliner) and Interior Minister Kijac to discuss checkpoints and RS
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police reform in general, the internal Serb squabbles broke into the open. In a series of meetings 

conducted over 2 weeks, the depth of the differences became evident until, on Thursday, 21 

May, at yet another meeting in Pale, when Bildt and Crouch made clear their combined intent 

to employ SFOR troops to control RS police misbehavior, General Karisik, Deputy Interior 

Minister, interrupted the discussion with the cold warning to the RS President and Interior 

Minister “that no one was authorized to discuss these questions since decisions were taken 

elsewhere.”79 Bildt immediately ended the meeting, and SFOR troops, he says, began to pay 

close attention to individual RS police anytime they happened to cross their path.

In June 1997, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paid her first visit to Bosnia. She 

came preceded by a reputation for asserting, forcefully, that SFOR was not doing enough to 

support the civilian reconstruction efforts in Bosnia. General Crouch set out to disabuse her 

of this view. He spent a day flying the Secretary of State around Bosnia showing off various 

SFOR initiatives, particularly restoring the transportation infrastructure — highways, bridges, 

and especially the rail system — work done almost entirely by NATO engineers. He ended 

with examples of Brcko reconstruction. Then the Secretary of State was taken to see US troops 

at Camp McGovern near Brcko. She acknowledged, Crouch remembers, that SFOR was doing 

more than she thought.

As part of the visit, Albright’s advance team had asked for a photo-op and an opportunity 

to make a press statement at a symbolic site in Brcko. General Crouch selected a site by the 

bridge across the Sava that joins Bosnia with Croatia. There, without prior notice either to 

General Crouch or the international implementation community (particularly Carl Bildt and his 

deputy Michael Steiner, who were just then involved in delicate negotiations with Tudjman’s 

government over restoration of commercial links), Secretary of State Albright declared the rebuilt 

Brcko bridge open to civil use. She called it “a road to Europe and the world.”80 She denounced 

obstructionists and promised her best efforts to restore Bosnia to its place in the community 

of nations. Secretary Albright then went on her way and left General Crouch with the task of 

mollifying the Principals, who suspected the general had known the Secretary’s intention and 

failed to inform them. Actually opening the bridge still required agreement on both ends, and 

Croatian acceptance of Albright’s declaration still had to be obtained by the High Representative. 

(The Brcko Bridge would be the center of a serious incident that fall, and Albright’s thoughts 

would then recur to the June visit.) Also in that month of June, the nations providing troops to 

NATO met and agreed to increase military support for civil implementation.81

Toward the end of the month, COMSFOR began to experience sleepless nights as the 

situation in the RS deteriorated precipitously. President Plavsic openly opposed the criminal 

linkages and activities of the Karadzic henchmen dominating the Pale Government, and the 

international community began to have real concern for her continued safety.82 The events that 

grew out of this dispute for political control of the RS provided opportunities for the various 

implementation agencies to break the monolithic hold of the SDS on Serb politics and bring 

more moderate voices to the Serb Entity leadership. This outcome was finally realized with the 

January 1998 selection of moderate Milorad Dodik as RS Prime Minister and the subsequent 

transfer of the RS Government from Pale to Banja Luka. 

The series of dangerously destabilizing events in the Republika Srpska coincided with 

a transition period in the international leadership in Bosnia. Some of these changes were 

structural, involving a change of authority. Others involved the changing of personalities at the 

top. In late May, the PIC Steering Committee met at Sintra, Portugal. For Carl Bildt, attending 

his final PIC as High Representative, Sintra was the point at which the international community 

came to accept the Office of High Representative as an essential “strategy-shaping operation 

they could not do without.”83 He attributed this largely to the presence of Madeleine Albright 

from the United States and the new British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook. Sintra also confirmed 
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Bildt’s successor as High Representative, and on 18 June the Spanish diplomat and politician, 

Mr. Carlos Westendorp, replaced Carl Bildt as the leader of civilian implementation in Bosnia. 

Spanish political figures thus occupied both the office of High Representative and Secretary 

General of NATO. US Ambassador Jacques Paul Klein left his position as UN Administrator 

of Eastern Slavonia and replaced the German Michael Steiner as Principal Deputy High 

Representative in July. General Crouch reflects that while these changes took place, in the midst 

of the fracture of the RS political elite, he often had no idea who was in charge over at the Office 

of the High Representative on any given day because departures often anticipated replacement 

by some margin.

The Sintra Conference gave the High Representative new authority to close offending media 

links, the first explicit grant of executive authority to that office.84 Incoming High Representative 

Carlos Westendorp wrote to General Crouch on 22 July 1997 expressing his hope that such 

action would not be required and characterizing such a step as 

at the extreme end of the ladder of escalation, in the first instance undesirable, and probably 

difficult to justify given the implications of such action in terms of human life and the likely effects 

within the RS. Ultima ratio: A good deterrent must never be used — though sending the MUP back 

to barracks will help.85 

On the military side, the US and French Multinational Divisions changed command. Major 

General Meigs gave up command of the 1st Infantry Division and MND-N to Major General 

David Grange on 9 July in Tuzla. On the 14th, Major General Yves Le Chatelier turned over 

command of the French framework division to Major General Christian Delanghe in Mostar. 

General Wesley Clark succeeded General Joulwan as SACEUR on 11 July. Finally, on the 30th, 

General Eric Shinseki assumed command of LANDCENT and SFOR from General Crouch.86

Clark, of course, also succeeded as CINCEUR and Shinseki, as Commanding General, US Army 

Europe. The title CINCUSAREUR was abolished in the spirit of the new order of jointness in 

the US armed Forces.

Plavsic’s denunciation of her Pale opponents focused particularly on the RS Interior 

Minister, Dragan Kijac.87 On 27 June, Plavsic had ordered Kijac removed from office when Kijac 

attempted to fire a Plavsic ally, a Major Lukac, Commander of a Special Police Counterterrorism 

Unit located near Banja Luka. Kijac responded by sending a detachment of special police loyal 

to him into Banja Luka. The British Commander of MND-South West, Major General Evelyn 

Webb-Carter, started transporting Plavsic around Banja Luka by armored personnel carrier to 

insure her safety. 

General Crouch, General Cordy-Simpson, and General Jack Nix went to Banja Luka to see 

what was going on. Crouch remembers a nighttime jeep drive through the town with WebbCarter that revealed groups of military-age men just standing around. About this time, Crouch 

also recalls meeting with Plavsic and the new High Representative, Carlos Westendorp. Plavsic 

seemed haggard and expressed concern that her office was bugged by her enemies. Crouch 

says he concluded she would survive, but that survival would depend upon SFOR’s ability to 

maintain a secure environment in the RS. 

Discussion also started among SFOR leaders about the need to do something about the 

Special Police. With the VRS remaining studiously neutral, the RS Ministry of the Interior Special 

Police, or MUPs, headquartered in Janja and stationed strategically through the RS in Banja Luca, 

Doboj, Brcko, Bijeljina, Superina, and Bratunac (K-9 unit), were becoming the principal threat to 

continued Dayton implementation. To move against the Special Police, as Cordy-Simpson and 

Jack Nix pointed out, would require time to gather the necessary intelligence as to membership, 

location, and equipment. A legal mechanism would have to be found in the General Framework 
126

Agreement and agreed to by the international community and NATO, and it would also require 

preparation of the ground through the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Kai 

Eide, who to that point was adamantly opposed to SFOR’s involvement in what he saw as an 

IPTF matter. Notably, heretofore General Joulwan had agreed with Kai Eide.88

On 29 June, Plavsic was detained by FRY police in Belgrade. On 30 June, General Crouch 

directed MND-N to send US forces to see to her safety once she was permitted to cross back 

into Bosnia. She had stopped for the night in Bijeljina, which was the location of Kijac’s Interior 

Ministry. Troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Greer of the 1st Battalion 77th 

Armor, drove into Bijeljina and went to the hotel where Plavsic was staying. There was some 

friction with the Russians, in whose sector Bijeljina was situated, when US forces were used, 

but COMSFOR was reassured of Plavasic’s welfare, and she returned to Banja Luka in an RS

military helicopter.89 Thereafter, she declared her intention to establish a rule of law as the only 

means by which the international community could avoid having to incorporate the RS into a 

unified Bosnia themselves. Kijac declined to give up his office, and the Pale crowd questioned 

the President’s authority to remove him. The international community proceeded as if he were 

no longer there but did not provoke resistance by undertaking to remove him from his office 

with force.

On 1 July, the SDS Executive Board ordered Plavsic to Pale or, failing that, to resign her post. 

COMSFOR directed his divisions to increase their presence on the ground throughout the RS 

significantly in order to send the message that if anyone contemplated an act of lawlessness, they 

would have to take an immediate SFOR reaction into account.90 Webb-Carter was already taking 

similar action in Banja Luka. On the 3rd, President Plavsic dissolved the RS National Assembly 

and called for new elections. On 4 July, a rebellious RS Assembly held a session in defiance of 

Plavsic’s order. The Assembly met in those days in Jahorina, near Pale. On 7 July, the Principals 

fell in on Plavsic’s side of the argument publicly, rejecting the notion that the Assembly could 

meet legally after the dissolution.91 On the 9th, NATO leaders meeting in Madrid followed suit 

with a statement of support.92 

For SFOR, the most significant event in the summer of 1997 occurred in Prijedor on 10 July, 

in the midst of the growing RS political crisis. NATO troops seized their first indicted war 

criminal, a Serb, and killed another in a parallel attempt. The public line continued to be that the 

NATO mandate on seizure of accused war criminals had not changed.93 Still, something new 

had occurred. Carl Bildt, now out of office and back in Sweden, wrote in the New York Times

that “NATO crossed its Rubicon.” 94 Bildt wrote, in fact, to complain that the first targets were 

relatively unimportant, and that the first arrests had not been part of a wider political strategy 

aimed at bringing all the indictees to book. This proved to be untrue. Subsequent seizures 

would expose a legal strategy of building a prosecution from the bottom up in contrast to Bildt’s 

preference to attack the problem from the top down. NATO’s was a strategy that required a 

good bit of patience and no little opportunism to see it through.

According to General Joulwan, the written NAC policy had not changed at all.95 As indicated 

earlier, NATO troops had been enjoined explicitly from assuming an aggressive policy in 

pursuing of PIFWCs in response to a direct query from General Joulwan to the NAC. The shift 

at NATO headquarters occurred in the spring of 1997 with a Secretary General’s interpretation 

of NAC guidance when the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 

(ICTY) changed its tactic for bringing pressure on NATO to do its bidding. The ICTY came up 

with a new device, the sealed or secret indictment.96

Heretofore, the list of PIFWCs had been public. NATO was thought by some, including Carl 

Bildt, to be making a determined effort not to encounter such persons, lest their detention be 

required.97 In fact, Bildt had confronted the North Atlantic Council with a demand for action 

when he and General Crouch met with General Joulwan, Javier Solana, and the Principals in 
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Sarajevo on 18 April 1997. Bildt pinned a map of Pale on the wall and described the location and 

reported public movements of former President Karadzic, much to the discomfort of General 

Crouch whom Bildt had not forewarned of his intentions.98 Now NATO was presented with 

ICTY indictments for persons NATO officers were known to deal with on a regular basis — in 

other words, persons they came in contact with during performance of their normal duties. For these 

miscreants, who clearly fell within the existing policy, the interpretation had to evolve. Instructed 

by the Secretary General of NATO, Mr. Solana, that some attempt would be required to arrest 

these subjects, Joulwan in turn offered his professional advice that, if this was to be done, the 

detention should not be a casual matter of the moment, as the guidance would seem to imply, 

but should be accomplished at a time and place of the military’s choosing by forces specially 

trained for the task. Solana agreed, essentially interpreting the standing policy on detention as 

follows: Broadly speaking, to avoid undue risk either to soldiers, subjects, or bystanders, detain 

only if “the tactical situation permits.”99 

In this decision, of course, the content of NATO’s military activities with regard to indicted 

war criminals had changed, all NATO’s pro forma denials notwithstanding.100 NATO members 

had begun to pursue war criminals, albeit selectively. The arrests remained national operations, 

carried out under cover of NATO, with the British Special Air Service the most active force and 

MND-Southwest the most active sector, reflecting the aggressive stance taken on the issue by the 

then new British Labor Government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.101 

Detention operations required detailed preparation and coordination at SFOR to minimize 

risk for soldiers and detainees, and to ensure an immediate evacuation of prisoners to The 

Hague. Afterwards, international officials had to be protected from attacks in retribution. 

COMSFOR was responsible for recommending execution of national plans to the SACEUR and 

subsequently for what one former SFOR staff officer aptly called “consequence management” 

throughout the country. In support of an arrest, regular SFOR troops would be deployed as 

appropriate to isolate the target area and position themselves to avoid any immediate reaction 

throughout the three MNDs. Then they would provide security to the various international 

officials and property designated “protected.”102 This was no small task in light of the number 

of persons with protected status and the secrecy that surrounded any apprehension attempt. 

The veil of secrecy proved to be an irritant to both the civilian Principals and the Contact Group 

ambassadors. The Principals expressed their great displeasure, with some heat, immediately 

after the first detention at a meeting in General Crouch’s headquarters at Ilidza. Heretofore 

critical of NATO’s reluctance to seize war criminals, now they argued, not without cause, that 

the NATO action left their unarmed subordinates exposed to retribution. 

To avoid an overlap with the July 1997 NATO Madrid Summit, the first detainees were 

seized the day following adjournment, General Joulwan’s final day in command. That left 

General Crouch “hanging” (his words) to deal with the consequences, more or less on his own. 

One suspect was killed when he tried to resist; the other was taken peacefully in the hospital 

where he was a doctor.103 A NATO soldier was wounded. The capture of indicted war criminals 

by NATO forces followed periodically from then on, for the most part in the Republika Srpska

because RS politicians flatly refused to live up to their obligations to turn over those indicted. 

Among those eventually brought before the bar at The Hague would be Tri-Presidency Member 

Krajisnik, by then no longer in office, and President Plavsic, after she left the RS Presidency.104

Plavsic would be permitted to surrender herself voluntarily when she was indicted in January 

2001.

These apprehensions, which were obviously not incidental to routine performance of duty, 

were recognized on all sides of the implementation effort as a major change in approach after 

the marked reluctance of NATO political leaders heretofore to direct the military to actively 

hunt accused war criminals. The initial PIFWC actions sparked a series of events in the RS that 
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became intertwined with the general unrest that extended from the Plavsic break with Pale 

to the scheduled municipal elections in September and the extraordinary RS parliamentary 

election in November. The first arrest and shooting were particularly upsetting to the Serbs 

because the two men had been charged in sealed indictments, unknown to them before they 

were approached for arrest. SFOR objected futilely to using sealed indictments because of the 

uncertainty it produced. The new SACEUR, General Wesley Clark, replied that the game had 

changed, and more arrests would follow. They did and so, too, did surrenders. Things also 

started to change regarding the RS ministerial or special police.

In the RS, a major spike in unrest and official noncompliance followed the first detention 

and the associated killing. There were weeks of rigid official noncooperation, crowd unrest, 

fire bombings, and apparently random attacks on selected international officials. These seem to 

have reversed Eide’s thinking about the efficacy of SFOR taking charge of the RS Special Police. 

Indeed, General Crouch says Eide’s change of heart was both abrupt and complete. The RS

Special Police, Eide insisted, should become SFOR’s full responsibility, the sooner the better. 

Unfortunately, the IPTF had been unable to penetrate the organization and could provide none 

of the detailed information necessary to proceed. Generals Joulwan and Crouch accepted in 

principle the need to act during Jouwlan’s last visit immediately before Joulwan’s retirement. 

Preparations continued with overt action to follow in August. Joulwan’s successor, General 

Wesley Clark, is critical of the delay, but Clark’s account ignores both the consequences of the 

collective approach required of international leaders in Sarajevo and the requirement to develop 

reasonably good intelligence before proceeding against the secretive Ministerial Police.105

Meanwhile the political struggle within the RS continued to fester.

On 14July, against the background of unrest resulting from the PIFWC action, the Principals’ 

decision to support President Plavsic in the RS political struggle was backed up by the European 

Commission for Democracy Through Law, called the Venice Commission, an international legal 

advisory body.106 The High Representative would employ the Venice Commission more than 

once as a high court of review to resolve Bosnian constitutional issues over the heads of the 

Bosnian courts and governments. In the face of the continuing turmoil in the RS, on the 16th 

the SFOR spokesman reported that General Crouch and the new High Representative had met 

with Serb Tri-President Krajisnik following which SFOR Deputy Commander for Operations, 

General Cordy-Simpson, met with the VRS Chief of Staff, General Colic, in a two-pronged effort 

to persuade the Serb leaders to maintain the peace in the RS. On 19 July, the SDS Executive 

Board expelled Plavsic from the party. The international community declared that this would 

have no effect on her position as president. Notably, there was evidence of another well-timed 

SFOR security surge in Pale, though SFOR denied doing anything out of the ordinary.107 

On the 25th, an SFOR JCO vehicle was firebombed. JCOs were teams of SFOR soldiers 

who lived in the countryside as part of the Dayton settlement to provide mutual reassurance to 

all factions that their enemies would not be taking any untoward actions. An attack on them 

was a serious matter, indicating that resistance had gotten seriously out of hand. On the 28th, 

General Crouch, now thoroughly outraged with the Pale shadow government, met again with 

Tri-President Krajisnik to warn him that this was the last chance to avoid a major confrontation. 

Interrupting Krajisnik’s normal peroration summarizing every indignity inflicted on the Serb 

nation since 1389, Crouch told the Serb Tri-President in some heat that the incidents of violence 

and the accompanying anti-SFOR rhetoric would have to stop, or “irrevocable action” by SFOR 

against Krajisnik and his allies would follow. When they left the meeting to face the expectant 

RS Press, Krajisnik was subdued. Instead of making his usual long statement, the Tri-President 

simply introduced General Crouch. Crouch said that “we have discussed the intolerable 

situation that exists, and President Krajisnik has assured me there will be no further incidents. 

“And,” he added firmly, “I believe what the President told me.”108 The violent incidents then 
129

did stop, immediately, indicating to General Crouch that he was correct in his belief that the 

Pale crew had orchestrated them all.109 Two days later SFOR command passed to General Eric 

Shinseki, and General Crouch departed for Washington, DC to serve as Vice Chief of Staff of the 

US Army.

During the 19 months from the TF Eagle crossing of the Sava River until his departure from 

command in late July 1997, General William Crouch was confronted by an ever changing set 

of challenges, all of which were additive. First, he had to carry forward the various programs 

initiated during his first year in command of USAREUR and, at the same time, to provide for 

the continued efficiency and sustainment of the large force now deployed to Bosnia. While he 

did that, he prepared first to reconfigure and then recover the US forces deployed in December 

1995. Once it was clear that the commitment would be extended in time, even for a period only 

of months, he also had to provide for a replacement force. Before Crouch did that, however, 

he succeeded to command of LANDCENT, a NATO headquarters he believed would be 

sent to Bosnia to complete the IFOR mission, but whose preparation was embargoed by the 

requirement to wait first for political consensus to develop on the NAC. Once political approval 

was obtained in July 1996, Crouch had 90 days to reform and restaff the headquarters; train 

it for peace operations; deploy it to Bosnia; and assume the missions of the two operational 

headquarters in place there, AFSOUTH’s IFOR and its land component, the ARRC.

Once in Bosnia, Crouch confronted the challenges of leading an alliance military force whose 

principal mission was to deter the outbreak of another war but whose energies were committed 

increasingly to providing the force to underwrite more ambiguous civil-military undertakings. 

Providing a safe and secure environment came to mean much more than seeing to the continued 

good behavior of the faction military forces. It involved wrestling with factional violence over 

refugee returns without becoming committed to civil policing, ensuring freedom of movement 

for Croat pilgrims traveling to the Pope’s Mass at Sarajevo, and damping down the response 

to the first arrests of accused war criminals in the RS. In practical terms, that meant finding a 

seamless linkage with the UN’s IPTF sufficient to give the unarmed police monitors enough 

muscle to influence the Entity police to do their duty in a predictable and professional manner. 

Finally, after a long period of refusal, the NATO command became involved in arresting war 

criminals in response to a change in approach by the prosecutors of ICTY and, doubtless, to a shift 

in the view of NATO political leadership. In Bosnia, operational art became a political process 

directed toward harmonizing tactical military actions and broader operational programs within 

the fabric of civil implementation while maintaining a balanced military posture that could 

respond to any sudden military threat.

In USAREUR, General Crouch continued in the pattern begun in 1994. In 1996, he turned 

the attention of his Senior Officer Training Program in USAREUR to a systematic self-study of 

the recent deployment. He focused energy on training and continuing the various international 

engagement and enlargement programs while his staff worked to find cost savings to meet the 

goals of the efficiencies program undertaken in the fall of 1995. As part of his effort to improve 

the single soldier’s quality of life, Crouch capitalized on the opportunity offered by the large 

force deployment to invest in barracks renovation in those units whose soldiers were absent for a 

year’s time. Because he had been in command a year before he became increasingly consumed in 

Bosnia operations, he found his programs were sufficiently embedded in his staff routine that he 

could continue to monitor them with short but reasonably regular trips back to Heidelberg, even 

after deployment to Bosnia. Not least important was his recognition that by 1996 USAREUR had 

become a strategic platform for launching contingency forces.

It is notable that Crouch continued to take an active hand not just in sustaining the force in 

Bosnia but in ensuring that the troops’ fighting edge and personal security were maintained as 

the mission continued. He did this by establishing force protection standards for base camps and 
130

operations, by providing for frequent visits by his staff officers from Heidelberg and Hungary, 

and by conducting periodic inspections of his own. Some of this national and service component 

intervention engendered resentment from the NATO officers at the ARRC and AFSOUTH and in 

TF Eagle itself. But such intervention was not unique to US forces, and it is logical that the senior 

Army officer in the theater would be used by the US theater commander to make sure Army 

forces under NATO OPCON maintained their security and retained their fighting competence 

in a deployment as politically sensitive nationally as that to Bosnia. It is equally logical that, 

under the pressure of events, this would produce some misunderstanding and friction with 

commanders whose immediate focus was limited largely to current operations.

Because the original Bosnia mission was for a fixed term of 1 year, the need to begin recovery 

planning immediately when deployment was in hand was obvious. Typically, General Crouch 

focused on producing a plan that would provide for the systematic retraining of the force and 

smooth reintegration with the families back in the Central Region: predictability, training, and 

quality of life. A thorough and systematic plan was developed to use a staged withdrawal 

through the ISB in Hungary to restore individual and team skills, to recover equipment, and to 

prepare personnel for return. Then, after the troops’ return from block leave, a sequential and 

progressive training program was instituted to bring the division to full combat readiness by 

August the following year. Of course, the 1-year mission turned out to be of indefinite duration, 

so some programmatic changes were required not only in USAREUR but also in the Army. 

When it became clear that the mission was going to continue beyond a year, replacing 

the original TF Eagle units had to be factored into the planning. Because there was to be 

no definitive political guidance on a follow-on mission until after the US general election in 

November 1994, whatever was done had to be prepared for in a way that did not commit the 

political leadership prematurely. The answer, as earlier in the crossing of the Sava, was to 

fall back on Army doctrine. The decision was made to use the notion of a covering force for 

the intermediate term replacement and then design a follow-on force for the longer term once 

guidance, both US and NATO, had become more certain. In the meantime, thought had to be 

given to rotating troops and spreading the burden of the Bosnia mission across a wider troop 

base than that remaining in Europe. This was a departmental issue that Crouch had to work out 

with the Army Chief of Staff while he developed the operational concept to support the needs of 

the theater commander in chief. Likewise, a major management function had to be performed 

to ensure the US force drawdown associated with transition to the covering force was managed 

in the most cost-effective manner. That had implications for force structure under the force cap 

as well as for detailed logistics planning and contract negotiation. Much of this would be done 

by the USAREUR staff, but the CINCUSAREUR had to set the standards and stay well enough 

informed to ensure his intent was being observed.

The appointment to LANDCENT produced a new set of challenges. General Joulwan’s 

strategic object was to inject a single truly integrated operational headquarters into Bosnia. 

This meant that the existing LANDCENT structure would have to be reformed, retrained for 

the new task, and then deployed to assume command in Sarajevo. No practical action could 

be taken to do this, however, until the NAC authorized the new mission in July. Then, in some 

90 days, including the summer vacation period in Europe, General Crouch had to replace 80 

percent of the headquarters manpower, reconfigure the staff for 24-hour-a-day operations, train 

the new team for the new mission, and get it to Bosnia to assume the mission of the IFOR staff 

and then of the ARRC. Not surprisingly, General Crouch, who by now had some expertise in 

training forces for Bosnia, had an exercise prepared by the US Army’s Battle Command Training 

Program and administered by his NATO higher headquarters in accordance with the training 

philosophy that all training begins with the commander. By November, the new team was in 

command in Sarajevo.
131

Midway through the transition, when AFSOUTH had departed but the ARRC still held 

land component command, the first challenging incident occurred in Gajevi. This incident 

involved armed Bosniac soldiers in the RS part of the ZOS exchanging fire with RS police. This 

was a serious matter, even if it was one well within the competence of the division commander 

to control. General Crouch, ARRC Commander Lieutenant General Walker, and division 

commander Major General Meigs were prepared for the challenge and dealt with it firmly and 

in short order. General Crouch’s response included both a political exercise with the Principals 

to provide for a common international policy position and underwriting a firm military response 

developed by his subordinates under his own particular mandate. This two-tiered responsibility 

characterizes the operational military command in Bosnia, and Crouch worked his first test like 

a master. No doubt the fact that the incident took place in the zone of his own national division 

contributed to the successful outcome, but the later performance responding to the Mostar 

shooting seems no less smooth.

Spring 1997 was a challenging period for the international community. After the Gajevi 

incident in November 1996, the faction militaries were reasonably compliant. Only the Brcko 

decision produced systematic restlessness in the faction camps, and once SFOR directed all of 

them to undo their mobilizations, the militaries again became quiet. The faction police and 

political organs were not. Gajevi continued to be a point of friction between Bosniac politicians 

in Celic and Serb politicians in Koraj and Lopare. Both sides could draw on popular support, 

the Bosniacs for organized returns to Gajevi, and the Serbs for mob responses and terror attacks 

to destroy Bosniac homes. The same phenomenon challenged the international community in 

the Croat region of western Bosnia, and to a lesser extent in the Bosniac towns in the central 

zone. This was rightly said to be a police problem, but the international community would not 

likely be able to respond to it unless it could find a means to instill discipline into police forces 

that were essentially hardline political instruments. SFOR, as the only immediately effective 

force available to the implementation bodies, had to find ways to become integrated into civil 

implementation without either assuming responsibility for it or becoming so committed to it that 

it lost its capability to do its primary mission. SFOR could contribute to planning and assist in 

organization where it was lacking, but its most effective contribution was evident coercive force 

to back up international demands. Often, only what the COMSFOR enforced became law, and 

he could enforce only so much before he found himself overextended. Moreover, he was limited 

in what he could do by NAC prohibitions on becoming involved in civil policing, escorting and 

protecting returns, and capturing war criminals. Therefore, what was required was the creative 

use of targeted, but limited, military actions to produce desired political effects. This required 

close continuous work with the Principals group, and, generally, the commander’s personal 

presence with the High Representative when it was time to threaten sanctions against the 

responsible leaders. The presence of the NATO commander had a coercive effect all its own.

To begin to better underpin the IPTF, SFOR and the international police undertook a program 

to remove the police checkpoint from the arsenal of the faction politicians. This set a precedent 

for broad SFOR involvement in at least what might be called exemplary oversight of Entity police. 

It also contributed to the breakup of the Serb political structure when it became bound up with 

a simultaneous general demand for police reform. The decisive external fact here was that there 

was already a major policy split in the RS political structure that broke down along geographic 

lines. The Banja Luka Serbs proved to be less irreconcilable than those in the east whose center 

was Pale. The COMSFOR became fully engaged in international efforts to capitalize on this split, 

both through his presence and support at meetings with the various RS leaders, and in specific 

actions taken, such as massing troops in Pale to limit the freedom of action behind the scenes of 

Radovan Karadzic. SFOR kept the military neutral in this nascent Entity civil war and provided 

force where necessary to keep the level of violence at acceptable limits.
132

Finally, during General Crouch’s period of command, NATO began apprehending PIFWCs. 

While most attention was paid to the actual arrest operations, the COMSFOR’s greatest challenge 

was in consequence management after an arrest, ensuring that any resulting repercussions did 

not get out of hand. As in all cases of incident management, this entailed finding a common 

international position with which to confront the responsible Entity officials and having the will 

and ability to commit the tactical forces necessary to quickly control an outburst when it did 

result. A common position was not always easy to find in light of the Principals’ strong belief 

that such operations, for which they had long called, exposed their unarmed subordinates to an 

unreasonable risk of retaliation.

General Crouch’s period of command marked the coming of age of the NATO Bosnia 

operation. Whereas the initial IFOR deployment was dominated by the specific mission to 

separate the military forces and the tyranny of a 1-year deployment, SFOR had enough time 

before it--18 months--to undertake multiple programs of longer duration. It could also exploit 

IFOR’s success and undertake a more active involvement with the civilian implementation 

authorities, now enjoying their own institutional stability. The change in the configuration of 

the US foreign policy team certainly affected the direction of US Bosnia policy. The fact that 

Secretary General Solana would direct the apprehension of war criminals in complete reversal 

of the declared instructions of the North Atlantic Council is evidence that the NAC was coming 

to acknowledge that any acceptable military withdrawal would depend on success in civil 

implementation, and they were prepared increasingly to act on that insight. The integrated 

headquarters first assembled and deployed by General Crouch would remain in Sarajevo, 

even when LANDCENT was reconstituted in Heidelberg in 1998 at the end of the US period of 

command. In some respects, it is his most enduring legacy.

A number of lessons can be drawn. First, the service component commander, usually the 

senior service officer in the theater with the possible exception of the commander in chief, is 

a valuable resource available to the theater commander. There is value associated with the 

experience and skills that go along with senior rank in modern armies, and no less is the moral 

force that attaches to seniority. The man, of course, is important too. General Joulwan expressed 

it well when he described General Crouch as having the personal demeanor, integrity, and 

character to succeed as an alliance commander. Those same characteristics also provided the 

credibility necessary to face down thugs parading as political leaders when push came to shove 

in places like Pale.

Second, operational command in peace operations is generally a task measured in time 

rather than space, and it is a function with a high political content. In a May 1997 memorandum 

for the SACEUR, Crouch explained what he called “The SFOR approach,” under the subject 

line, “Recent Events in Bosnia-Herzegovina Conducted without Incident.”

The SFOR approach starts with the surfacing of issues and establishment of common policies and 

programs at the principals’ level; involves close cooperation and identification of mutually shared 

objectives among SFOR, international organizations, the national and entity governments, and 

former warring faction military forces; takes maximum advantage of a comprehensive and timely 

information network; and relies upon an ability to conduct coordinated contingency planning 

and to manage crisis response at the national level, and through the SFOR MND elements at the 

regional and local levels.

Significant in our ability to influence events and, hence, prevent or manage crises is our close 

involvement with non-government agencies, entity political organizations, and the national 

infrastructure. The contribution of the SFOR augmentees in CIMIC [Civil Military Integration 

Center] together with the expertise they bring is a major factor in developing organizations and 

infrastructure in activities that are rightly theirs is only possible through our ability to facilitate 

their decision-making and management processes as a consequence of our ability to develop deep 
133

and continuous contacts with them.110 

This is the approach of an organization committed to a long-term process, not a brief tactical 

event.

Two other general observations can be made. It is important for senior component leaders 

to keep those in the Pentagon informed. General Crouch spent a lot of time and energy making 

sure the Army Chief of Staff and the Army Staff knew what he was doing. He took frequent 

trips back to CONUS when he was otherwise preoccupied in Europe to overcome the mentality 

back home of the “Seventh Imperial Army.” That sort of personal information exchange was 

necessary so as to avoid surprising the Department when he had to call for assistance and to 

maintain the reputation for headquarters’ integrity that follows when those separated from you 

by an ocean are kept current with what is really going on in your domain.

Finally, there is evidence here that in situations of mission ambiguity, there is greater virtue 

in maintaining predictability in standards, simplicity, and doctrine. Standards are important 

because they let subordinates know what is expected. Simplicity has a value because it is least 

subject to friction. Doctrine provides a commonly understood basis for action, or at least a 

common understanding of what is desired and a clear tool for its expression.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 5

1. HQ SFOR, Transcript, Changing of the mandate ceremony from IFOR to SFOR held on 20 December 1996. Available 

on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1996/t961220a.htm.

2. Ibid. See also, DRAFT [MEMO] PERSONAL FOR SACEUR FROM COMSFOR, SUBJECT: COMSFOR 

Scene Setter for 3 Jan SACEUR/SECGEN Visit, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

Stabilization Force Journal, Volume 1A, Supporting Documents, 20 October 96-1 February 1997. The author has not 

seen a single written text tying all these endeavors into a single, phased pattern. However, the series of briefings 

prepared during General Crouch’s command presents a consistent and unified pattern, underwritten by a family 

of plans that can properly be called a campaign plan. See, for example, slide below that portrays a general view of 

how all efforts, military, civilian, and Entity, should fit together in harmony.

3. It is notable that, when talking about sanctions as late as the PIC Steering Board in spring 1997, Carl Bildt is 

still focusing on diplomatic and economic leverage. Bildt, Peace Journey, 341-343.

4. Lieutenant General Jack Nix to the author.

5. The International Joint Election Center was essentially an SFOR creation.

6. General Wesley K. Clark, who succeeded General Joulwan at SHAPE, would dispute this statement about 

Secretary of Defense Cohen. See General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of 

Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 98. Clark’s book is a tale of the conflicts between his responsibilities to 

NATO and to the United States Department of Defense. 

7. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, White House Fact Sheet: Training and Equipping the Bosnian 

Federation, 9 and 12 July 1996. http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/bosnia/bosnia_fs_training_jul9.html; Briefing on 

Train and Equip Program for the Bosnian Federation by Ambassador James W. Pardew, Jr. Special Representative for Military 

Stabilization in the Balkans, July 24, 1996. http://www.state.gov/www.regions/eur/bosnia/724brief_bosnia_federation.html

8. Bildt, Peace Journey, 28.

9. Holbrooke, To End A War, 277.

10. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 307-310, 339.
134

11. Holbrooke, To End a War, 319-20, 334. Separating the Bosniacs from Muslim extremists proved to be more 

difficult than the US government admitted. See International Crisis Group, Report, Is Dayton Failing?: Bosnia Four 

Years After the Peace Agreement, 28 October 1999. Available on line at http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/.

12. Holbrooke, To End A War, 277-278. See also view of Pauline Neville-Jones, “Dayton, IFOR and Alliance 

Relations in Bosnia,” 51. 

13. Holbrooke, To End a War, 276-78. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1B, Agreement on Regional 

Stabilization.

14. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, May 1997, 

Bosnia Peace Operation--Progress Toward Achieving the Dayton Agreement’s Goals, GAO/NSIAD-97-132, Chapter 2:2, 

“Military Train and Equip Program is Progressing Slowly.”

15. Date of the request is in General Crouch’s response. Letter from General William Crouch, COMSFOR to 

Mr. Ante Jelavic, dated 5 June 1997, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Stabilization Force Journal. 

Supporting Documents, Vol. I-D, 01 June 97-17 July 97.

16. Memorandum from COMSFOR to SACEUR, SUBJECT: FEDERATION COLLECTIVE TRAINING CENTRE 

APPLICATION TO EXTEND LIVNO TRAINING ARE[A], dated 31 May 1997, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Stabilization Force Journal. Supporting Documents, Vol. I-C, May 97. See also Talking Points on 

the Livno-Glamoc Range attached to draft of Crouch Memorandum in HQ, USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives 

Group, Special Topic Notebook, Entity Armed Forces, Book I.

17. Crouch letter to Jelavic, 5 June 1997. An October briefing explaining General Crouch’s analysis prepared by 

MG J. B. Burns is also in the notebook.

18. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Federal Ministry of Defence, Letter from Mr. Ante Jelavic to General William 

Crouch, dated 8 June 1997 in HQ, USAEUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, Entity Armed 

Forces, Book I.

19. Office of the High Representative, Press Release, Federation Army Combat Training Center at Livno/Glamoc, 

Sarajevo, 3 July 1998. http://www.ohr/int/press/p980703a.htm. Problems insuring payment for expropriated Serb land 

extended into 1999.

20. Quoted in Office of the High Representative, Press, Press Statement on the Lifting of the Suspension of the ZOS 

Procedure, 26 November 1996.

21. Joint Military Commission Meetings were mandated by the Annex 1A of the General Framework Agreement

for Peace (GFAP). They were meetings where faction military commanders met with COMIFOR or his designated 

representative, to receive instructions and address issues of importance to all. Admiral Smith designated Lieutenant 

General Walker, COMARRC, to be his representative at JMCs. General Crouch designated his Deputy Commander 

for Operations, British Lieutenant General Cordy-Simpson, to be his representative. JMC meeting were held in the 

Multinational Divisions with local faction commanders attending as well. The Joint Military Committee meeting 

was one of the principal public acts of the NATO chain of command and one of the principal tools to impose 

discipline and prevent misunderstandings. The Deputy Commanders for Operations also tended to have frequent 

bilateral meetings with faction leaders as well.

22. HQ IFOR, Office of the Commander, LCCCGX/LJ/96.21, MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: SHORT MINIUTES 

OF COMIFOR’S JMC HELD ON 27 November 96, dated 27 November 1996, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Journal, Volume 1A, Supporting Documents, 20 October 96-1 

February 1997. HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 27 November 1996. 

23. Office of the High Representative, [News] Bulletin, No 33, Issued January 17, 1997. Available on line at http:

//www.ohr.int/bulletins/b970117.htm.

24. Observation made to the author by Colonel Maxie McFarland.
135

25. Summarized in HQ SFOR, Transcript of the Press Conference held on 17 January 1997. Available on line at http:

//www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970117a.htm.

26 There are a number of sources for the incident in Gajevi. A reasonably good account can be built from 

the SFOR press conferences, starting on 20 January, through the 29th. These are available by date on line at http:

//www.nato.int/sfor/trans/trans.htm. These can be checked against a file in HQ USAREUR, History Office, Crouch 

Papers, folder 3980.04, Gajevi: Incident, March 1997, assembled by the 126th Military History Detachment with 

maps, copies of original records, and a chronology.

27. Federation Police are organized by Canton.

28. Headquarters, Multi-national Division (North), Office of the Commander, Letter dated January 22, 1997, to 

Mr. Bjelosevic, Chief, Center for Public Security, Republic of Srpska, Ibid.

29. Swan informed the author that General Crouch later told him never to do that again.

30. The records conflict about who spoke to the Muslims, Colonel Thompson or LTC Swan. Swan told the 

author it was he.

31. MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: Gajevi Incident Actions by the Principals, dated 27 January 

1997, signed by Major Nicholson in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force 

Journal, Volume 1A, Supporting Documents, 20 October 1996-1 February 1997.

32. MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: Meeting with President Plavsic in Banja Luka, dated 27 January 

1997, signed by MAJ Nicholson, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force 

Journal, Volume 1A, Supporting Documents, 20 October 1996-1 February 1997.

33. Federation MUPs had been disbanded at the insistence of the international community in November 1976. 

Comments of Ivan Ivanko, Spokesman for the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in HQ IFOR: 

AFSOUTH, Transcript of the press conference held on 14 November 1996. Available on line at http://www. nato.int/ifor/

trans/t961114a.htm.

34. Letter dated 24 March from the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

addressed to Secretary General, Annex to, United Nations, Security Council, Document S/1997/257, 27 March 1997, 

in Letter of the Secretary General [UN] to the President [of the Security Council] transmitting 3rd SFOR report (27 

March 1997). Available on line.at http://srch1.un.org:80/plweb-cgi/fastweb?state_id=967125138 and view= unsearch and 

docrank= 5 and numhitsfound=17 and query=26%20March%201997 and and docid=59 and docdb=scletter and dbname=web 

and sorting=BYRELEVANCE and operator=adj and TemplateName=predoc.tmpl and setCookie=1 or through UN search 

function using S/1997/257 as entry argument.

35. General George Joulwan, response to question submitted for the record, in Congress, Senate, Committee on 

Armed Services., Hearings, Department of Defense Authorization For Appropriations For Fiscal Year 1998 and the Future 

Years Defense Programs, Unified Commanders on Their Military Strategies and Operational Requirements 105th Cong., 1st 

sess., March 18, 1997, 847-848.

36. Carl Bildt, HQ IFOR: AFSOUTH, Transcript of Mr. Carl Bildt’s press conference held on 21 November 1996. 

Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ifor/trans/t961121a.htm.

37. Colonel Swan opined that once the RS Police took responsibility for policing Malhala, Jusici, and Dugi Dio, 

matters progressed without incident. An ASSESSREP drafted for General Crouch to send General Joulwan on 2 

February, indicated that “MALHALA is a potential success story due to the detailed cooperation between SFOR, 

UNHCR, IPTF, Muslim and Serb political leaders.” ASSESSREP 2 February 1997, TO: SACEUR, FM: COMSFOR, 

in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Journal, Volume 1A, Supporting 

Documents, 20 October 1996-1 February 1997.

38. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia, 292-298. Then US Ambassador to Germany Charles Redmond is credited 
136

with a decisive role in these negotiations.

39. Bildt, Peace Journey, 321.

40. An assessment of press conference accounts and the lack of SFOR action against the Croat faction armed 

forces. In Bosnia, wearing of uniforms did not necessarily mean current employment; moreover, the use of 

uniformed but criminal paramilitaries by all sides during the war left a shadowy residue.

41. HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference held on 11 February 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ 

sfor/trans/1997/t970211a.htm.

42. IPTF Report is contained in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, 

Mostar Notebook, General William Crouch, COMSFOR. Also in the notebook is a Memorandum for Record dated 21 

February that indicates the IPTF Representative in Mostar was found to be in the pay of the Croats, and a detailed 

account of the Principals meeting with the Federation Leadership.

43. Letter from Office of the High Representative, to Alija Izetbegovic, Chair of the Presidency and Kresimir 

Zubak Member of the Presidency, dated 24 February 1997, Ibid.

44. HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference held on 21 February 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ 

sfor/trans/1997/t970221a.htm.

45. Letter dated 24 March from the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

addressed to Secretary General United Nations, Security Council, S/197/257, 27 March 1997.

46. HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference held on 21 March 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ sfor/

trans/1997/t970415a.htm.

47. HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference held on 24 February 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ sfor/

trans/1997/t970224a.htm. HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference held on 28 February 1997. Available on line at http://

www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970321a.htm. On 21 March 2000, after Tudjman’s death, Tuta and Stela were transferred 

to the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for trial as war criminals.

48. Bildt, Peace Journey, 323.

49. Richard Holbrooke, To End A War, 294-310.

50. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebooks, 27 November 1996-23 January 1997, 24 January 1997-3 

March 1997.

51. HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference held on 11 February 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ 

sfor/trans/1997/t970211a.htm.

52. Colonel Rabon, the JMC Officer, believes the Serbs credited the night observation capability of the US 

helicopters with an ability to see anything that moved and thus were intimidated perhaps even more than 

warranted. 

53. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook, 24 January 1997-3 March 1997, entries for 7, 8, and 9 

February.

54. For tank incident, see comments by Maj. Saddleton in HQ SFOR, Transcript of the Press Conference held on 13 

February 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ sfor/trans/1997/t970213a.htm. The T-55 was observed outside 

its holding area. Apparently it was being taken on a test drive by a mechanic.

55. Bildt, Peace Journey, 324. The Serbs appear to have the better of the argument. The matter of Brcko is 

addressed in The General Framework Agreement, Annex 2, Inter-Entity Boundary, Article V, Arbitration for the 

Brcko Area. Paragraph 1 reads: “The Parties agree to binding arbitration of the disputed portion of the Inter-Entity 
137

Boundary Line in the Brcko area indicated on the map attached at the Appendix.” That said, a loose reading of the 

text quoted clearly can involve growth or diminishment of the territory included in the boundary.

56. General Framework Agreement, Annex 2, Inter-Entity Boundary, Article V, Arbitration for the Brcko Area. The 

Agreement required a resolution in 1 year and a decision based on a majority of the three arbitrators.

57. Office of the High Representative, Document, Brcko Arbitral Tribunal for Dispute Over the Inter-Entity Boundary 

in Brcko Area: AWARD, Rome, 14 February 1997. Available on line at: http://www.ohr.int/docu/ d970214a.htm. Bildt, 

Peace Journey, 328-329.

58. Incident with General Simic related by Colonel Jim Rabon. Admission about effect of Meigs actions in 

General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook, 3 March 1997-13 Aprril 1997, Entry for 14 April.

59. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook, 24 January 1997-3 March 1997, entry for 14 February.

60. Ibid., 330. Bildt observed that a decision imposed by the chairman is explicitly not in line with the General 

Framework Agreement which calls for a vote of two members (Owen plus the member of one faction) to decide. The 

US argued they had a side agreement with Milosevic that freed Owen to do as he did.

61. The problem was different in the two Entities. In the Federation, the political structure was Cantonal and the 

police were organized on a decentralized basis. Indeed, one long-term initiative was establishing Federal oversight 

of Cantonal administration of justice. In the RS the political organization was unitary, and the police all came under 

the Ministry of the Interior, the basis in 1997 of Pale’s muscle.

62. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, SFOR Commander’s Conference 19 March 1997. 

Notebook appears to have been a read-ahead for COMSFOR. It includes briefings, speaking notes, and scripts 

prepared for the COM and Chief of Staff.

63. Ibid. Script titled TERMS OF REFERENCE.

64. Ibid. Point Paper, dated 15 March 1997, Subject: Operational Direction and Guidance for Checkpoints. 

According to the Agenda, this issue was addressed by Major General Nix, the CJ3. The guidance, of course, was 

the Commander’s.

65. Department of Defense, Defense Link, News Briefing, DoD News Briefing; General George A. Joulwan, Supreme 

Allied Commander, Europe, Monday, May 12, 1997-1 p.m. (EDT). http://www.defenselink. mil/news/May1997/ t051397_

t0512jou.html.

66. Office of the High Representative, Speech, Speech of the High Representative: Remarks by the High Representative, 

Mr. Carl Bildt, to the National Press Club, Washington, DC, May 1, 1997. Available on line at http://www.ohr.int/

speeches/s970501a.htm. This is one of Bildt’s more important statements.

67. Comments by Secretary General Javier Solana in HQ SFOR, Transcript of Press Conference by the Secretary 

General of NATO and SACEUR held on 25 March 1997. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/ 

t970325b.htm.

68. United Nations, Security Council, S/197/257, 27 March 1997, Letter dated 24 March from the Secretary 

General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) addressed to Secretary General.

69. United Nations, Security Council, S/197/369, 14 May 1997, Letter dated 9 May 1997 from the Secretary 

General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) addressed to Secretary General.

70. Letter dated 9 May 1997 from the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

addressed to Secretary General, Annex to United Nations, Security Council, Document S/1997/369, 14 May 

1997, in Letter of the Secretary General [UN] to the President [of the Security Council] transmitting 3rd SFOR 

report (27 March 1997). Available on line at http://srch1.un.org:80/plweb-cgi/fastweb?state_id=967127274 and view= 

unsearch and numhitsfound =2 and query=S%2F1997%2F369 and and docid=193 and docdb=scletter and dbname=web and 
138

sorting=BYRELEVANCE and operator=adj and TemplateName=predoc.tmpl and setCookie=1. 

71. Key document is a 23 May Memorandum of Agreement, SUBJECT: IPTF Checkpoint Policy Implementation, 

signed by Carl Bildt, the High Representative; Kai Eide, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General; 

General William W. Crouch, COMSFOR; and Manfred Seitner, IPTF Commissioner. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Journal, Vol. 1-C, 30 March 1997-31 May 1997.

72. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Article VI, para 4 (d).

73. United Nations, Security Council, S/197/369, 14 May 1997, Letter dated 9 May 1997 from the Secretary 

General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) addressed to Secretary General.

74. Bildt, Peace Journey, 225-235.

75. Ibid., 334.

76. The provision is part of the Bosnian Constitution, General Framework Agreement, Annex 4, Constitution, 

Article III, “Responsibilities of and Relations Between The Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina And the 

Entities,” paragraph 2, Responsibilities of the Entities.

77. Bildt, Peace Journey, 338. Crouch’s intent provided by General Crouch.

78. Ibid., 353. Holbrooke believes Secretary of State Albright’s visit in late May was decisive in its influence on 

Plavsic. Holbrooke, To End a War, 353-354.

79. Bildt, Peace Journey, 355.

80. Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, 3 June 1997: Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, 

“Remarks at the Brcko Bridge,” Bosnia-Herzegovina, June 1, 1997. Available on line at http://secretary.state.gov/www/ 

statements/970601.html.

81. Clark, Waging Modern War, 81.

82. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, June 1998, 

Bosnia Peace Operation--Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International Involvement Increased, GAO/NSIAD98-138, Appendix II provides a detailed chronology of the crisis.

83. Bildt, Peace Journey, 357-358.

84. Steering Board, Peace Implementation Council, Communique: Political Declaration from Ministerial Meeting of 

the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council, Sintra, 30 May 1997, para. 70. The Sintra Agreement is located 

on the High Representative’s Home Page at http://www.ohr.int/docu/d970530a.htm.

85. Office of the High Representative, letter to General W. Crouch, Commander, SFOR 22 July 1997, in HQ 

USAREUR History Office, Crouch Papers, folder 3960.06, OHR Ltr to GENERAL CROUCH, 22 July 1997, CI-07-037. 

The letter was a reply to a letter from General Crouch. Westendorp seems to favor an approach to open nonpartisan 

media combined with the threat to move against the nationalist organs. Indeed he objects that “semipublic 

discussion about direct military action against the premises of offending stations, notably those of the SRT in Pale, 

have been unhelpful.”

86. In April 1998, LANDCENT was reconstituted in Heidelberg under a German Commander in Chief. SFOR 

continued in Bosnia as a NATO contingency headquarters commanded by General Shinseki.

87. Implementation of the checkpoint policy required a series of meetings between the Principals and the Entity 

political leaders, most notably The Republika Srpska leadership. Strains between the President Madame Plavsic and 

her Interior Minister, Dragon Kijac were already in evidence in these talks. See meeting notes in HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Journal, Vol. 1-C, 30 March 1997-31 May 1997.
139

88. Discussion with General Crouch.

89. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook, 19 May 1997-30 June 1997, entry for 30 June.

90. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 1 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970701a.htm.

91. Various international agencies had supported her publicly. The letter of the 7th was the public declaration 

of the whole of the Principals. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 8 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press 

Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans /1997/t970708a.htm.

92. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 9 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970709a.htm.

93. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970711a.htm.

94. Carl Bildt, “Now NATO Troops Should Catch the Big Fish,” The New York Times, July 12, 1977, 21.

95. The account that follows is based on an interview by the author with General Joulwan.

96. Apparently in April 1997. General Montgomery C. Meigs, Personal Notebook, 3 March 1997--13 April 1997, 

entry for 2 April.

97. Bildt, Peace Journey, 347-349.

98. Ibid., 349. General Crouch’s discomfort was described by Major General K. J. Dreweinkiewicz, General 

Crouch’s Chief of Staff.

99. On 4 July SFOR policy was stated explicitly as: “The North Atlantic Council has authorized SFOR to detain 

and transfer to the ICTY, persons indicted for war crimes, when SFOR personnel come into contact with them 

while carrying out their normal duties. In such cases, SFOR personnel will detain indictees, if the tactical situation 

permits.” HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 4 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970704a.htm.

100. Ibid.

101. By 12 March 2000, British Forces claimed to have apprehended 12 of 18 PIFWCs arrested by NATO and to 

have killed one. Philip Jacobson in Brussels, “War crimes court wants SAS to trap Karadzic,” electronic Telegraph, 

Issue 1752, Sunday, 12 March 2000. Philip Sherwell in the Hague, “SAS snatch squads lead the way in Bosnia,” 

electronic Telegraph, Issue 1766, Sunday 26 March 2000. The electronic Telegraph is the on-line version of the London 

Daily Telegraph.

102. Protected status meant deadly force would be used as required to prevent harm or destruction.

103. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970711a.htm.

104. Krajisnik was seized by the French in Pale on 3 April 2000. Julius Strauss, Balkans Correspondent, “Serb 

leader seized by Nato troops in Bosnia,” electronic Telegraph, Issue 1775, Tuesday, 4 April 2000.

105. Clark, Waging Modern War, 79-85.

106. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 14 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970714a.htm; and HQ SFOR, Transcript: 

Joint Press Conference, 15 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available 
140

on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970715.

107. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 21 July 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970721a.htm.

108. Discussion with General Crouch.

109. Ibid.

110. HQ Peace Stabilization Force, SFOR CG/97, MEMORANDUM FOR GENERAL GEORGE JOULWAN, 

SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE, SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED POWERS EUROPE, CMR 

450, BOX 7100, APO AE 09705, SUBJECT: Recent Events in Bosnia-Herzegovina Conducted without Incident, in HQ 

USAREUR, History Office, Crouch Papers, Miscellaneous Paper.
141

CHAPTER 6

OFFENSIVE 1997:

PEACEKEEPING TO PROTECTORATE

The year 1997 was pivotal for international efforts to turn Bosnia into a civil state more like 

its Western European neighbors. Starting with the declaration of the Steering Board of the Peace 

Implementation Council (PIC) meeting at Sintra, Portugal, in May, the governments of the PIC 

began to hand over meaningful executive authority to the High Representative.1 Following a 

stormy summer and fall in Bosnia, defined largely by a low level civil war in the Republika Srpska

(RS), the PIC met again in December in Bonn, and gave the High Representative, now Spanish 

politician and diplomat Carlos Westendorp, the powers essentially to rule by decree. Following 

Bonn, the High Representative could impose laws (about which the elected politicians failed to 

agree) and dismiss even directly elected officials he deemed obstructive or noncompliant.2 

Of course, granting authority to declare laws and fire officials, and providing the means to 

enforce these new powers, were two different things. The High Representative still depended 

on the coercive abilities of SFOR to give his declarations standing, and the Dayton separation 

of civil and military powers remained in place. Carlos Westendorp, a very careful man, was 

generally conservative in using his new powers. But the degree of acceptability of the military’s 

engaging in civil implementation underwent a decided shift upward with the arrival of the new 

Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), General Wesley Clark, in July, on the heels of 

the Albright policy coup the previous spring. 

It was shifted even further when Air Force (Reserve) Major General Jacques Paul Klein, 

Administrator (essentially a military governor), UN Transition Administration for Eastern 

Slavonia (UNTAES), resumed his civilian identity as a career foreign service officer, and as 

Ambassador Jacques Paul Klein was assigned as Principal Deputy High Representative in 

Sarajevo the same month Clark became SACEUR. Klein was energetic, often fractious, and of 

the Albright school of thought that the West had a positive moral mission to teach the Bosnians 

to be good democrats. Klein, who had held both civil and military authority in Eastern Slavonia, 

intended to succeed in achieving the Secretary of State’s ambitious goals and by disposition 

would be forceful in getting his way.3 Westendorp, who was not a strong personality and who 

divided his time between Sarajevo (Monday to Thursday) and Brussels (Friday to Sunday), left 

Klein a lot of room in which to be active. When opposed by the Commander, Stabilization Force 

(COMSFOR), Klein was more than ready to go directly to the SACEUR whom he found a willing 

associate.

General Wesley Clark, number one cadet in his West Point class of 1966, Rhodes Scholar 

from Little Rock, Arkansas, and as Joint Staff J5, Richard Holbrooke’s military associate during 

the Dayton and pre-Dayton negotiations, has always been impatient, a man in a hurry.4 Brilliant 

and mercurial, not inclined to suffer fools gladly, even when they outranked him, supremely 

self-confident (not without cause), Clark was known in the Army for his brilliance and aggressive 

style, and for involving himself habitually in the details of the tasks he assigned to subordinates. 

Whereas George Joulwan’s first concern as SACEUR was the harmony of the alliance, which led 

him to seek explicit NAC consensus before action, Clark, who believed NATO’s future depended 

on visible and rapid success in the Balkans, was more inclined to act first and seek forgiveness 

afterward. Clarke appears to have had an excellent relationship with the NATO Secretary 

General and to have made a particular effort to keep Secretary General Solana aware of his 

actions. Indeed, Clark seems to have been greatly moved by his initial meeting with the Spanish 

diplomat. “Wes,” Solana said, “you must make the NATO mission in Bosnia succeed. It is the 

only operation NATO has done, and it must succeed.”5 Then, he added: 
142

understand that NATO cannot succeed with its mission if the international mission as a whole 

is not successful. This is not a matter of simply protecting your forces. You must actively help 

the civilians succeed. You have to stay within the limits of the military mission you have been 

given, but within that mission, you are going to have to do more to help the overall Dayton 

implementation succeed.6 

In comparing Clark’s and Joulwan’s relationships with the NAC and US Department of 

Defense, it is important to remember that the American position on NATO policy is represented 

in the NAC by an ambassador from the Department of State, not the Department of Defense. 

Given the divisions in the highest US policy circles, that meant that NAC guidance might well 

cut across the wishes of Clark’s civilian master in the Pentagon and leave Clark hanging in the 

middle, between Albright and Cohen. Anyone who knew Clark at all would expect him to ride 

perilously close to the boundaries of his instructions if he believed circumstances required it, 

and Clark intended to win in the Balkans. He adopted an activist strategy: “to use our forces to 

discredit the Bosnian Serb hardliners by taking away the instruments of their power [the army, 

the police, and the media] and embarrassing them in front of their own people.”7 Operationally, 

he characterizes his concept as using “forces, not force,” a distinction without difference except 

after the fact, according to the success or failure of the mission.10 As a tactical prescription, the 

formulation differs very little from that practiced by earlier NATO commanders except in its 

economy of expression. 

Undoubtedly, Clark sought to accelerate the tempo of SFOR direct action in Bosnia. The 

implementation struggle had become a personal contest between Wes Clark and Slobodan 

Milosevic. To succeed, Clark believed he had to be the real COMSFOR.9 Notably his historical 

role model was General Lucius Clay, the post-World War II military governor of Germany.10

Naturally, this notion did not always sit well with the NATO commander in Sarajevo, who was 

closer to the problems being dealt with; who had to accommodate and cooperate daily with the 

leaders of the various international agencies in Bosnia, none of which answered to the NATO 

commander in Mons; who was conscious that his immediate US and NATO master often walked 

very close to the limits of US national policy as seen from the office of Secretary of Defense; and 

who was very much aware that it was COMSFOR whom the signatories had charged with 

implementation of the military provisions of the General Framework Agreement. 

All of this meant that the incoming COMSFOR, General Eric Shinseki, would often find 

himself in an uncomfortable position. He was the man on the ground in Bosnia, charged by 

the Dayton Accords (as interpreted by the North Atlantic Council) as COMSFOR to manage the 

only effective instrument of coercion in the theater. In Washington, from whence he came, he 

had a Secretary of Defense and a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who took a conservative 

view of the military piece of Dayton implementation. In Mons, he had a NATO and US theater 

commander who, to achieve what might be called the Albright-Holbrooke-Clark vision of 

Bosnian reformation, was inclined to push the limits in interpreting conservative instructions. 

Across town, in the Office of the High Representative, he had a conservative and often absent 

High Representative inclined toward procrastination and pragmatism, whose principal deputy 

was an aggressive American, recently military governor of a province of Croatia, who was likely 

to act in the absence of guidance11 and inclined to go behind COMSFOR’s back directly to the 

SACEUR, whose instincts were always to strike. In Bosnia, General Shinseki had to negotiate his 

way between these contending forces while he dealt with the dangerous situation on the ground 

in the Republika Srpska with the limited military instrument he inherited from his predecessor. 

His was bound to be a rough ride at Stabilization Force (SFOR), but his tour in command lasted 

longer than his predecessor’s and his successor’s.
143

In Bosnia the situation in July 1997 was deteriorating. The Republika Srpska was breaking into 

an open, if low-level civil war between the relatively more Dayton-compliant Western region, 

led from Banja Luka, and the unrepentant nationalists in Pale. The course of events that grew 

out of the dispute for political control of the Republika Srpska provided opportunities for the 

various implementation agencies, to include SFOR, to break the monolithic hold of the Srpska 

Demokratska Stranka (Serb Democratic Party--SDS) on Serb politics and bring more cooperative 

voices to the Serb political leadership. This outcome was realized with the January 1998 

selection of moderate Milorad Dodik as RS Prime Minister and the subsequent transfer of the 

RS Government from Pale to Banja Luka. These things did not just happen but were the result 

of a great deal of painfully coordinated international effort and dangerous military and police 

action in a highly unstable Balkan environment. SFOR had to give the appearance of evenhanded enforcement of the Dayton Accord between Entities, factions, and political rivals, even if 

the acts taken inevitably favored one side or the other. Failure might lead to the discrediting of 

one party to the dispute, or it could produce complete frustration on the part of the international 

community and conceivably lead to a subsequent withdrawal of the various forms of support 

essential for the entire restructuring effort to succeed. 

The critical events of the last half of 1997 involved assumption of responsibility for controlling 

the bodies of Entity Special Police forces, an aggressive program of IPTF/SFOR inspections of 

police stations in both Entities to encourage police restructuring, a riot in Brcko that flowed 

onto the Brcko bridge, and the SFOR takeover of the RS system of television broadcast and 

transmission towers in the name of the High Representative. Simultaneously, SFOR provided 

vital security and administrative support to ensure the successful conduct of elections by the 

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). September municipal elections 

were followed in November by a special legislative election in the Republika Srpska, consequent 

to President Plavsic’s dissolution of the National Assembly. This election was to be effective in 

reshaping the political landscape of the Serb Entity and, indeed, the national political landscape. 

The climax of the long summer military campaign came on 8 and 9 September, a week before 

the municipal elections, with the “Battle of Buses,” when SFOR upset an apparent coup attempt 

by SDS hardliners, and Jacques Paul Klein sent their leaders back to Pale in a public and 

humiliating fashion. Though the account that follows deals separately with each element of this 

struggle, it is important to remember that the events were intertwined, and that a major part of 

the context of each was formed by what had preceded. From 17 August to 14 September 1997, 

it was very tense in the Republika Srpska, and it is important to remember that underneath it all 

was a deadly earnest struggle between two native political groupings not at all under control of 

the international monitors.

When General Shinseki arrived in Sarajevo, RS political affairs were already in disarray. 

President Plavsic had dissolved the National Assembly and attempted to fire her Interior 

Minister Kijak. General Clark’s initial guidance to the new COMSFOR directed, among other 

things, that he (Shinseki) take steps to bring the Entities’ paramilitary police under Annex 1A 

supervision.12 As indicated in the last chapter, the groundwork for this initiative had been laid 

prior to Clark’s arrival. Indeed, the Federation Special Police had come under supervision of the 

International Police Task Force (IPTF) as part of the Mostar settlement. Generals Joulwan and 

Crouch had accepted in principle the necessity to act against the RS Special Police just before 

Joulwan’s retirement. Crouch initiated planning, and Clark directed that Shinseki take on the 

mission as a priority on the latter’s assumption of command shortly afterward. Accordingly, it 

was announced on 8 August that these relatively heavily armed organizations, an Anti-Terrorist 

Brigade and Special Buildings Unit, should be treated according to the same regime as other 

paramilitary forces under Annex 1A of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP).13

On 15August, at a special meeting of the Joint Military Coordination Committee, the Deputy 
144

Commander for Operations, Lieutenant General Rodrick Cordy-Simpson, presented instructions 

to the commander of the RS Special Police, Major General Goran Saric. Special Police units were 

given the alternative either to change themselves to true civil police, subject to oversight by 

the IPTF, or to disband. Until they had done one or the other, they were to be subject to strict 

regulation by SFOR. Most notably they would have to produce membership lists, accept new 

identity cards, and identify and account for all equipment. Their activities would be strictly 

limited and performed only with SFOR permission and oversight until such time as they were 

transferred to IPTF supervision.14 The process of reducing and converting the body of Special 

Police to civil police was tied to forward movement on reform of the civil police under Annex 

11 of the GFAP.15

The Entities had accepted the principle of reconstitution and retraining of all police at a 

European Union conference in Ireland in September 1996. They reiterated their support of the 

corresponding provision of the Dayton agreement again at a PIC meeting in Paris in November 

1996.16 The process of reform differed between the Entities for structural and contingent 

political reasons. Control of all police in the Republika Srpska was centralized in the Ministry 

of the Interior. In the Federation, control of local police was decentralized to Cantonal Interior 

Ministries and, like everything else in the Federation, tended to be divided into parallel systems, 

often existing side by side, one for Croats and one for Muslims. Nonetheless, in the Federation 

there had been some progress in police reform that was not matched in the RS. Reports of 

Serb police involvement in attacks on Bosniac returnees were frequent and police failure to 

protect returnees was common. Various bodies of ministerial police were prominent in openly 

guarding the residence of former President and indicted war criminal Karadzic in Pale. The 

ministerial police were a disciplined armed force at the disposal of the most intransigent faction 

in the Republika Srpska. 

The requirement to place ministerial Special Police under control and to proceed with 

ongoing IPTF efforts to reform the civil police was greatly accelerated by the situation produced 

by the Serbian constitutional struggle. Bringing the Special Police under SFOR supervision did 

not, in fact, represent a change in the NATO mandate in spite of earlier resistance by the UN 

Special Representative noted previously. The Ministry of Internal Affairs Special Police (called 

MUP17) represented a category included under the provisions of the Dayton Accords. The MUPs’ 

heaviest weapons had been removed by the Implementation Force (IFOR), along with those of 

other paramilitary forces in the field.19 Thereafter, the MUPs had been treated or tolerated as 

police forces by choice. That policy had not worked. It was now superseded. General Saric 

received his instructions on Friday August 15th. That same day the RS Constitutional Court, 

with two members conspicuously absent, ruled against President Plavsic’s dissolution of 

the legislature and call for new elections. This decision was immediately denounced by the 

international community, which, as explained in the last chapter, had already taken a legal 

stance on the issue in favor of the RS President. President Plavsic announced she was founding 

her own party, the Srpskog narodnog saveza (SNS), the National Alliance Party.

The first crisis with the RS Special Police occurred the following Sunday in Banja Luka, and 

it quickly overlapped the decision of the Constitutional Court. At 0430 on Sunday, 17 August, a 

body of Special Police loyal to President Plavsic and led by Major Lukac, took control of the Banja 

Luka Regional Police Security Center. The leaders of the Banja Luka civil police were linked 

to Pale hardliners, specifically now dismissed Minister of the Interior Kijac, who continued to 

operate in the Ministry offices in Bijeljina. 

Sometime that morning, Serb Tri-Presidency Member Momcilo Krajisnik (who legally had no 

authority over internal RS matters) requested permission from SFOR to use other Special Police 

forces to respond to Lukac’s action. Instead, after consultation with the other Principals and at 

the request of the Office of the High Representative, General Shinseki directed the British-led 
145

Multinational Division-South West (MND-SW), commanded by British Major General Angus 

Ramsay, to surround the building in order to avoid further violence. In a concerted action 

with the IPTF, British forces took charge of the site and returned the Plavsic Special Police to 

their barracks. British troops continued to secure the site while the IPTF entered the building 

to inspect for evidence of human rights violations. The IPTF was responding to two charges 

apparently made by President Plavsic related to the political crisis. One charge involved the 

illegal wiretapping of citizens, President Plavsic in particular, the other the intimidation and 

beating of one of the judges of the Constitutional Court, Jovo Rosic, who had resisted a judgment 

against President Plavsic’s actions. The IPTF found evidence of human rights violations and a 

quantity of illegal weapons. Around 1730, a group of 70-80 police showed up, presumably to 

take back their Police Security Center, but SFOR and the IPTF were able to defuse the situation 

without incident. 19

On 19 August, Major Lukac’s group from the 6th Battalion of the Anti-Terrorist Brigade 

were declared to be out of compliance with Annex 1A and the Instructions to the Parties issued 

to General Saric on the 15th. Major Lukac’s troops were to be limited to VIP protection duties, 

presumably of President Plavsic, and all weapons unnecessary for that function were to be 

confiscated. The weapons and vehicles used in the action of the 17th were seized. The Police 

Security Center was returned to the civilian police. President Plavsic appointed a new police 

chief, Milan Sutilovic. He was first arrested and then released when he entered the Police Center 

to take control. In Brcko the police failed to comply with two directives from Ambassador 

Farrand.20

On 20 August, at the request of President Plavsic, the IPTF supported by SFOR intervened 

decisively in the ongoing fight for control of the police in Banja Luka. MND-SW conducted a 

0600 hours coup de main, called Operation SHIVA, taking control of the five main police facilities.20

They seized simultaneously the regional Police Academy, the Police Security Center, and three 

civil police stations. Again, the forces immediately involved were largely British: a company of 

the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers with 15 armored vehicles at the Police Security Center; a troop 

of D Squadron, Household Cavalry; and 79 Commando Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, at the 

three police stations. A company of the Czech 6th Mechanized Battalion occupied the Police 

Academy. The operation was supported by the SFOR reserve, the aviation units of the US 4th 

Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, and the operational reserve company of the Norwegian Telemark 

Battalion. A large cache of illegal weapons was found and seized. The same day, the OHR 

announced that evidence of human rights abuses had been discovered in the Banja Luka Police 

Security Center, and that there was evidence that constitutional court judges had been harassed 

and subjected to abuse. Plavsic’s right to appoint a new police chief was underwritten, and the 

removal of Mr. Kijac and Major General Karisik, his deputy, was called for.22

In addition to what was already a busy day for MND-SW, the 6th Special Police Battalion 

at Radovac Bare, Major Lukac’s parent unit, was subject to an SFOR compliance inspection. 

They were found to be noncompliant.23 Their weapons were seized, and they were placed 

under a total training and movement ban. The upshot of this series of events was a division 

of governmental and police authorities in the two regions of the Republika Srpska.

24 One set of 

offices and officials was loyal to President Plavsic and one to the Pale hardliners. During this 

period of unrest, most governmental offices remained in the eastern RS, while Plavsic and her 

allies operated out of Banja Luka. Most important in the long run, however, was the presentation 

of clear public evidence of the criminality of the Serb police and Pale Interior Ministry and the 

demonstrated ability of SFOR to reduce pockets of overt resistance among the police authorities 

with overwhelming force if necessary. Significantly, while remaining active on the margins, 

SFOR and the other Principals were then content to leave final resolution of the constitutional 

problem to the electorate, as long as local officials maintained the peace within the regime of 
146

inspections imposed under Annexes 1A (military) and 11 (police). President Plavsic agreed 

with the IPTF to begin restructuring the police in the Republika Srpska.

25 

While simultaneously keeping the peace between the two warring political factions in 

the Republika Srpska in accordance with an international view of relevant legalities, moving 

aggressively to gain control over both the RS civil and Special Police, and continuing to address 

the hostility brought about by the threat of sealed war crime indictments, COMSFOR and the 

High Representative addressed another vexing problem: controlling the television media in the 

Republika Srpska. These issues too became intertwined as the Srpska Radio Televizija (SRT), the 

dominant RS television network, began to portray international actions as reflections of the 

Nazi occupation. The president of the SRT was none other than Serb Tri-President Momcilo 

Krajisnik.

The Sintra meeting of the PIC Steering Committee had granted the High Representative his 

first real executive authority over Bosnian affairs in precisely the area of media control. 

It [the Steering Board] declared that the High Representative has the right to curtail or suspend any 

media network or programme whose output is in persistent and blatant contravention of either the 

spirit or letter of the Peace Agreement.26

As indicated in the last chapter, coming into his position, Carlos Westendorp told General 

Crouch he was not inclined to use the final sanction. Apparently it didn’t take him too long 

before he began to have second thoughts. On 20 August, the same day as the SFOR attack on 

the Banja Luka police facilities, the High Representative warned Krajisnik that his management 

of the SRT Corporation was contrary to international standards. He, the High Representative, 

would be forced to take decisive action, Westendorp wrote, if some basic principles of fairness 

in broadcasting were not adopted.27

On 22 August, Mr. Westendorp addressed the Permanent Council of the OSCE in Vienna, 

making several key statements.28 First, he noted the problem of media control and the lack of 

access by other than the hardline opposition to the Dayton Accords. He offered as evidence a 

propaganda broadcast the day before that compared SFOR to the SS occupiers of World War 

II. He reported his notification to Pale officials that he no longer recognized the legitimacy of 

Interior Minister Kijac and his deputy, General Karisik. Finally, he stated in strong terms his 

position that Krajisnik had no standing as a member of the Joint Presidency to become involved 

in internal affairs of the Republika Srpska.

29 The next day, SFOR laid down its position on the 

constitutional crisis at the Joint Press Conference in Sarajevo. The SFOR spokesman declared 

that the Commander:

Will not permit either party to seek a solution through the use of force,

Will not tolerate the use of the media to incite or encourage violence, and

Insists on political, democratic means to settle disputes.30

But behind the unanimity, a hint of a disagreement crept into the conference over control of 

the instruments of public information. The spokesman of the High Representative reported his 

master’s comments at Vienna. With regard to controlling the hardline media, said the spokesman, 

“He has the right, he has the will, and needs the tools.” Asked about the “tools” in light of 

the authority of SFOR (“But SFOR has the tools you need, right?”), the High Representative’s 

spokesman responded:
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We don’t have the physical access to the equipment necessary that we need to do whatever we 

want, physically, to SRT, bearing in mind that paragraph 70 of Sintra gives us extraordinary 

powers. We need access to certain equipment and where we get that equipment is not necessarily 

a decision which is going to be made by SFOR.31

While there was general agreement on the need to do something to bring the SRT into 

line, there was a sharp disagreement on the part of the High Representative and the SFOR 

commander over what could best be done. This all came to the surface on 25 August when the 

High Representative wrote two letters, one to Member of the Presidency Krajisnik and one to 

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

The letter to Krajisnik outlined recent inflammatory broadcasts by SRT directed against 

SFOR, the IPTF, and domestic political rivals. Westendorp then issued a clear ultimatum that 

Krajisnik’s alternatives would correct these practices, or his network would be closed. The letter 

to the Secretary General was a request over the heads of the military commanders concerned, 

Shinseki and Clark. It referred to previous correspondence on 8 July. Westendorp laid out his 

actions to date and the persistent misbehavior of the SRT. He then closed:

In this respect and in accordance with your letter of 24 July I must formally request you to take 

this matter before the NAC so that SFOR can be authorized to help me curtail or suspend media 

or programming if I deem it necessary. I consider this a matter of urgency given the short time 

available before the municipal elections.32

The important issue here, aside from the lack of consideration shown the SFOR commander, 

was the recognition by Westendorp that the action he was requesting was beyond the authorities 

granted SFOR by the NAC. Presumably Shinseki had told him so. Moreover, in all fairness to 

the High Representative, he was only following the precedent of his predecessor, Carl Bildt, in 

requesting modification of NAC limitations where it might be granted. In all likelihood, Jacques 

Klein was involved in this approach to the NAC to expand the NATO authorities to underwrite 

the powers granted by the PIC.

Ironically, while this was going on, there was a reported attempt by unnamed parties, 

presumably related to the Banja Luka-Pale struggle for power, to seize a television transmitter 

in the hardline area of Doboj. The immediate conclusion by many was that this was an SFOR 

action, notwithstanding that SFOR denied any involvement. The incident heightened tensions 

around television transmitters just when the Principals were engaged in a debate about how 

to deal with them. The same day the Doboj transmitter was supposedly attacked and the day 

after the High Representative wrote the Secretary General of NATO, COMSFOR sent the High 

Representative a letter.33 First, he noted that he received his copy of the High Representative’s 

letter from Brussels (NATO Headquarters). He had not received the courtesy of a copy from 

the High Representative’s office. Then General Shinseki observed that the letter was contrary 

to the consensus of the various Principals the evening preceding. The other Principals, he said, 

were unanimous in seeking a way to open up alternative media rather than to close down the 

offending network. The other Principals, Shinseki wrote, believed such an act of suppression 

would create a reaction the opposite of that desired. SFOR was ready to support expansion 

of the independent Open Broadcast Network, OBN, which had been established early in the 

peace implementation process and which Westendorp had indicated to Crouch was his favored 

alternative.34 “The history of democracy has been one of freedom of expression,” Shinseki 

reminded the High Representative. “Freedom of expression is the essence of a democratic state, 

and we have been adamantly willing to put up with objectionable expressions in order to have 

the larger right.” 

The Serbs, Shinseki continued, took most of the propaganda for what it was, and the incident 
148

in question had even brought condemnation from the Banja Luka Government in response to its 

stridency. He closed by regretting the High Representative’s failure to coordinate in advance 

the position expressed to the Secretary General. “This clearly infringes on the Command 

and Control functions of SFOR and has no basis in either Dayton, the UN Security Council 

Resolutions nor in SFOR’s Operational Plans and mandate from the NAC.” Unmentioned was 

a general belief that there was no good plan in the Office of High Representative for what he 

would do with the towers once he had taken them into his possession. Possession would bring 

with it responsibility for retaining fixed sites, a requirement that would strain already limited 

manpower. It would also bring responsibility for maintaining the operation of the network, the 

major source of information to the citizens of the Republika Srpska.

The upshot, however, was a qualified success for the High Representative. On 30 August, 

the NAC authorized SFOR to enforce the High Representative’s powers.35 COMSFOR was 

instructed to prepare plans to take control of the television network but to execute only on 

authority of the SACEUR. Mr. Westendorp wrote a conciliatory reply to General Shinseki on 

27 August, but the goodwill that had marked the work of the Principals was beginning to fray 

under the pressure of events.36 Moreover, the tempo of events was moving faster than staff 

actions, and COMSFOR was required to adapt to them as the September municipal elections 

approached. Ironically, the first event in a rapidly moving series was an unanticipated seizure 

of a television tower by the commander of the 1st Military Police Company, part of Jim Greer’s 

1st Battalion, 77th Armor, Task Force.37 

During the night of 27-28 August, Greer sent a platoon of military police and a platoon of 

infantry, under command of the MP company commander, to establish a radio relay on the 

high ground by the Udrigovo Tower. They expected to find only three caretakers on site. The 

relay was required to provide the battalion commander communications connecting his main 

command post near Brcko with a tactical command post near Janja, troops in and around 

Brcko, and others in Bijeljina during an operation to be conducted with the IPTF the morning 

of the 28th. Greer’s area of responsibility encompassed roughly 100 kms x 175 kms, so radio 

relays were a frequent requirement. Instead of three caretakers, the relay force found 27 armed 

Serbs on the site.38 The force arrested the 27, took their weapons, and secured the tower. More 

immediate problems then shifted the tactical focus for a day or two. 

The MND-N unit that had occupied the facility was out on patrol as part of a reaction 

to a deteriorating situation in and around Brcko, the most sensitive flash point in the Serbdominated area of Bosnia. The crisis at Brcko on the 28th resulted from President Plavsic’s 

attempt to extend her control east as far as Bijeljina in anticipation of the elections soon to follow. 

The fact that Brcko was now the focus of a decisive commitment by the implementing powers 

to create a multiethnic civil polity at the key land bridge between the legs of the Republika 

Srpska no doubt attracted particularly violent resistance by Pale hardliners who must by then 

have felt their power slipping. The match thrown into the volatile mix at Brcko on the 28th of 

August was another attempt by Plavsic-loyal police to assume control of the Brcko regional and 

special police stations, an attempt that coincided, probably not coincidentally, with an IPTF/

SFOR inspection of police facilities.39 The events that followed show what happened when the 

principle of “forces, not force” broke down in the presence of hardline resistance.

The open sources on the incidents at Brcko are contradictory in their presentation of fine 

details. The general facts are that in the early hours of the 28th, police friendly to President 

Plavsic attempted to seize several police stations, some of which were in Brcko and in Bijeljina. 

In Brcko, a mixed force of Captain Kevin Hendricks’ Company D, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry, 

and an attached platoon of military police from the 1st MP Company, moved through town to 

secure the police station for the IPTF and three bridges (to control access). At the same time, in 

Bijeljina in the Russian sector, infantry and military police from the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor 
149

Task Force, attempted to make their way into town to the police stations (local and special 

police) also in support of IPTF inspectors.40 Later, in Sarajevo, the IPTF reported, indeed 

insisted, that they were not in any way involved in attempts to take over police facilities.41

SFOR’s spokesman indicated that SFOR had moved because they had indications that there was 

potential for confrontation between different police factions and that they were in Brcko to feel 

out the situation and support the IPTF.42 The US Department of Defense news briefer, Captain 

Mike Doubleday (USN) reported that, in fact, SFOR had had troops deployed at five towns 

that morning--Brcko, Bijeljina, Doboj, Derventa, and Modrica--in response to requests from the 

IPTF. Doubleday explicitly tied the IPTF request to the possession of advanced knowledge that 

Plavsic police might try to seize the various police stations (local, regional, and MUP).43 It is 

also true that since 8 August SFOR and the IPTF had been engaged jointly in a series of intense 

inspections of police stations throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina under the rubric of Operation 

SECURE BEAT as part of the international effort to bring police in both Entities under control.44

General Wesley Clark, the SACEUR, says in his memoir that US military authorities were 

informed of the intentions of Plavsic’s police allies in Brcko.45

It is entirely possible that for the IPTF the inspections in Brcko and Bijeljina were just part 

of the SECURE BEAT program, or that, even with the SFOR forces involved, they were merely 

routine precautions in anticipation of potential violence in order to snuff it before it began. 

However, these events took place just 10 days after the affair in Banja Luka where abrupt seizure 

of the police station by Plavsic police was followed, conveniently, by international military and 

police action, thus effectively turning control of the station over to President Plavsic--for the 

good and proper reason, of course, that the international community had judged her claim to be 

constitutionally superior. Evenhandedness is not neutrality. 

Still, a citizen of Brcko would have had some grounds to conclude that the international 

community was seizing a police station if he were awakened early and arrived to see US 

military police surrounding the building and stringing barbed wire--especially if he had been 

alerted earlier to expect it.46 What happened in Brcko and Bijeljina was that the hardline faction 

was ready for a repetition of the Banja Luka police station drill and responded violently and 

effectively. In Bijeljina the SFOR patrol never got to the Special Police station before the IPTF 

called off the effort.47 In Brcko the response came close to producing a major crisis.

As addressed in the previous chapter, there is a key bridge at Brcko that crosses the Sava 

River into eastern Croatia, an area seized and then lost by the Serbs during the Balkan war. 

Colonel Gregory Fontentnot, the first US brigade commander to enter Bosnia with the original 

IFOR, had put a fixed US checkpoint on the bridge when he took control of his sector. He did 

so, he later wrote, for many reasons, not least the importance of the crossing for US forces south 

of the river. He also used the site to control east-west movement of the Serb Ministry of Interior 

troops and north-south movement of Croats and Serbs. “The Brcko Bridge has tremendous 

symbolic importance and was also a dangerous place and I believed it should be protected--

co-manned, by the way, with Serb cops.”48 The symbolic value had been reemphasized in June 

1997, when the US Secretary of State declared the bridge reopened to civil traffic during her visit 

to Brcko. Elsewhere that spring, when NATO forces had been reduced in size with the creation 

of SFOR, many of the old IFOR fixed checkpoints had been abandoned. In part, this was because 

the general success in gaining control over the countryside had reduced the need for movement 

control, and the value of free movement between Entities as part of the permanent settlement 

increased in importance. In part, the reduction was due to the discovery at Gajevi that stationary 

checkpoints could become magnets for disorder and targets for attack. That notwithstanding, in 

August 1997, the US-NATO checkpoint was still located on the Brcko Bridge and the security of 

the bridge was still the principal mission of the company on site. 

Riots began at Brcko early in the morning on the 28th as US military police were securing 
150

the police station.49 Rioters focused on the IPTF presence in town and the SFOR checkpoint 

at the bridge.50 The attacks were reported to follow “the blaring of sirens across the town and 

incitements issued on the local radio station for people to defend police facilities from the 

international community.”51 When citizens got to the police station, they did indeed find US 

troops in position around the station. SFOR troops were driven off after some severe handling. 

US forces separated in the town fell back on the checkpoint at the bridge. Outside of town, 

Colonel Greer had been at his TAC CP near Janja, observing the reactions at the Special Police 

headquarters. The Special Police headquarters garrison was known to retain some heavy 

weapons that could be troublesome if they were sent to Brcko or Bijeljina that morning. 

Suddenly, Greer found himself with all his forces committed and two operations going 

bad. He responded according to the prevailing Crisis SOP: Deploy, Isolate, Dominate, Mass, 

and Restore.52 Greer judged that the problem of Bijeljina was less serious than that in Brcko. 

In Bijeljina the troops were outside trying to get in; in Brcko they were cut off. Greer moved 

in that direction. With his own units committed, he had to generate additional forces with the 

support of the Division Commander, Major General David Grange. Grange set up a temporary 

headquarters nearby, but, says Greer, was content to provide necessary assistance without 

interfering in his subordinate’s actions. Eventually Greer would control ten maneuver company 

equivalents, essentially a small brigade. He was able to acquire four platoons from different 

units that he sent into the city to rescue the Deputy High Representative, the Joint Control 

Officers, and other internationals. Meanwhile he concentrated forces around the outskirts of 

Brcko, while continuing to watch the other Special Police sites for any signs of hostile reaction. 

The IPTF was compelled to withdraw its monitors from Brcko, 40 under SFOR protection, 

in the face of coordinated and violent mob pressure. The mob, which grew to over a thousand, 

attacked troops at the bridge with sticks, rocks, and two-by-fours studded with nails. Gasoline 

bombs were thrown at vehicles. The IPTF station was destroyed, and many IPTF vehicles 

severely damaged. US forces employed warning shots from small arms and track-mounted 

machineguns and released crowd control agents to break up violent groups several times 

during the day. Soldiers did not have riot gear issued at that time. Two US troopers were 

injured by the mob. One soldier with a serious injury to his eye was evacuated through medical 

channels to Germany. The other remained on the bridge. To their great credit, the troops 

retained their composure and discipline in the face of great provocation during the attack. They 

held their position on the bridge through the 28th and 29th when the mob finally withdrew 

as Greer progressively tightened an outer ring of troops surrounding the mob, and President 

Krajisnik arrived to “intercede” and send his constituents home. The White House issued a 

warning about consequences, but, interestingly, there was no particular public outcry about 

removing US soldiers from Bosnia, though Republicans in Congress were posturing generally 

about administration policy just then.53 By 1997 the American people seem to have become 

used to the idea of soldiers in harm’s way in the Balkans; difficult though it was, Brcko was no 

Mogadishu. 

Within days, special non-lethal weapons were shipped to US forces in Bosnia. Locally, 

the permanent US checkpoint was taken down and the security of the site left in the hands 

of the Serb police, and IPTF monitors.54 The explanation of the withdrawal that makes sense 

was that, on review, the fixed post was deemed no longer worth the investment of manning 

it. This was consistent with the general practice of reducing the number of fixed checkpoints. 

SFOR believed it could provide the necessary protection to the bridge with mobile patrols less 

vulnerable to mob action. General Clark, who was consulted about the decision to remove the 

checkpoint, approved it based upon its tactical logic.55 Nonetheless, although IPTF officials soon 

returned and SFOR took pains to explain the withdrawal of its checkpoint, Brcko appeared to be 

a tactical victory for the Serb hardliners. According to General Clark, it was perceived as such 
151

by members of the US administration.56 

Following the incidents in Brcko, General Shinseki and Deputy High Representative Klein, 

apparently with General Shinseki’s agreement, negotiated an agreement with Member of the 

Presidency Krajisnik concerning the return of the Udrigovo tower under terms favorable to 

the international community. Udrigovo was a key link in the RS broadcast network for two 

reasons. First, it was the link that turned the signal 90 degrees, allowing broadcasts from Pale to 

travel to Banja Luka, or the other way around. Second, it was the RS link with the transmitters 

in Belgrade, across the border in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Judging from Krajisnik’s 

evident concern to regain control of the tower, Klein, , Shinseki, and others concluded they had 

a valuable point of leverage to solve the persistent problem with the broadcast media. 

On 31 August, Shinseki wrote to Krajisnik indicating he had assigned the tower special 

status as “an essential public utility and property vital to the implementation of the Peace 

Plan.”57 As such, he would continue to hold the tower until the Media Support and Advisory 

Group (MSAG) resolved its status. The MSAG was a panel of broadcast experts assembled by 

the international community to oversee Bosnian media outlets. In his letter, Shinseki pointed 

out that on the previous evening, a group claiming loyalty to President Plavsic had come to the 

tower to request access. By now, the SRT network, like the civil police and government, was 

divided among the contenders for control of Republika Srpska. 

The next night, an aggressive crowd arrived at the tower. A large group was brought in by 

bus to demonstrate against the occupation. About 50 of the hardier demonstrators made it up 

to the tower, but after some tense moments, they were dispersed by a mixed group of engineers, 

military police, and infantry.58 General Clark, attending a commander’s conference, called 

President Milosevic from Washington, DC, to demand the mob withdraw.59 On 2 September, 

consequent to further negotiation between Klein, Shinseki, and Krajisnik, an agreement was 

signed by Major General David Grange, Commander MND-N; Mr. Drago Vukovic, from SRT; 

and General Karisik, Deputy Interior Minister of Republika Srpska.

60 (Like Kijac, Karisik had 

been ordered out of office but had not complied. His participation here gave Ambassador 

Westendorp some heartburn when he learned of it.) The agreement returned the tower to SRT

control in return for a commitment from Krajisnik that the Republika Srpska media would refrain 

from inflammatory broadcasting, would provide an hour a day for opposing political views and 

prime time to Ambassador Westendorp, and would participate in the MSAG efforts.61 SFOR 

would hold a position nearby to insure that general security held. 

The simultaneous return of the tower following the crowd assault and the announcement of 

the dismantling of the fixed site on the Brcko Bridge received mixed reviews. According to the 

Washington Post, the move was condemned by the Department of State and the International 

Crisis Group, a Bosnia-based western think-tank generally critical of any moderation in 

international supervision of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the other hand, the actions were 

approved by the OSCE as appropriate to dampen Serb discontent on the eve of the elections 

to be held within 2 weeks.62 Influenced by criticism from Ambassador Robert Gelbard, the 

State Department troubleshooter for Bosnia, Clark, who claims he had been unaware of Klein’s 

initiative on the television tower, ordered Shinseki to revoke his participation in the agreement. 

Shinseki, who had given his word to respect the results, refused and said he would resign his 

position first. Clark, lacking the necessary support from the Secretary of Defense to relieve his 

uncooperative subordinate, ultimately made the best of the fact that US troops would retain a 

nearby position overwatching the tower.63 At a DOD press conference, responding to Gelbard’s 

criticism and that of the Washington press, and reflecting his own aggressive views on Dayton 

implementation, Clark made a strong statement on recent events: “We will not be intimidated 

by threats to our troops.” The next day he was summoned to appear before Secretary of Defense 

Cohen, who warned him to be careful what he said. “You may find yourself getting committed 
152

to something that we can’t or don’t want to do.”64 For the simple fact was that Clark’s aggressive 

stance, which flowed both from his own experience and the insistence of the NATO Secretary 

General, was already becoming far too much for the Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon.65

Some explanation for General Shinseki’s more conservative posture likely derived from the fact 

that he had only recently departed from the Army Staff and was more sensitive to the nuances 

of Departmental interpretation of Presidential policy.

If Brcko and regaining the television tower were a victory for the Serb radicals, it was one 

they were unable to exploit, and it led them to overreach themselves. Brcko was followed by the 

hardliners’ most audacious action, an attempt to mobilize a mob in Pale and drive it on buses to 

Banja Luka to confront a pro-Plavsic rally. There was perhaps even the intent to overthrow the 

Plavsic presidency the week before the municipal elections. SFOR was required to coordinate a 

multidivisional response on short notice. 

According to General Clark, he was informed on 5 September of the intentions of the Plavsic 

opponents to hold a rally in front of Plavsic’s headquarters in Banja Luka. In light of indications 

that the hardliners intended a coup, Clark intervened with Ambassador Gelbard in Washington 

to have the rally declared illegal by the High Representative. After some confusion created by 

the high-level unilateral US intervention, local authorities denied the SDS permission to hold 

a scheduled mass rally where they intended, but Tri-President Krajisnik declined to move 

it. Indications were that they would ignore this challenge.The stage was set for a decisive 

confrontation.66

At 0730 on 8 September, French scouts from Multinational Division-Southeast (MND-SE) 

informed General Shinseki that around 150 buses were forming in and around Pale and being 

loaded with military-age young men.67 At 1000, US-led MND-N was directed to conduct a delay 

as the convoy passed through the division area of responsibility (AOR). Jim Greer remembers 

the first serial of the first convoy passing his position near Brcko simultaneously with receipt of 

the order to stop it. Fortunately the Serb buses were divided into serials because of their number 

and the limited road net. They also had the disadvantage of the political geography, meaning 

they had to drive the right angle from Pale through Brcko to Banja Luka, since they believed 

they could not enter the Federation. Jim Greer’s troops were not so constrained.

The US-led division was to slow the movement of the bus convoy until 1800 to buy time for 

British-led MND-SW to prepare for the arrival of a large hostile mob in their AOR. MND-N 

carried out this classic cavalry mission throughout the day, relying on the natural canalization 

of terrain and real-time intelligence to track the various bus serials as they moved toward their 

objective. Meanwhile, MND-SW organized its plans in conjunction with the local Banja Luka 

authorities, who took responsibility for maintaining order inside the town.

Throughout the day, MND-N elements slowed the convoy’s movement, conducted 

inspections at checkpoints, and stripped off buses as it moved through the sector. Greer 

eventually concentrated wheeled vehicles and soldiers in a narrow defile west of Brcko, where 

they could block the succeeding echelons of the bus convoy.68 In Sarajevo, SFOR monitored the 

progress of the main convoys using unmanned aircraft. The tactical commanders employed 

helicopters to track the columns and outriders. Most often, the initiative at the point of contact 

was left to junior NCOs, manning small checkpoints, facing scores of increasingly drunken 

and hostile passengers. The superior command and control capability and efficient use of 

information by disciplined troops with initiative proved to be decisive. The task of dealing with 

the mobile rally was passed over to MND-SW around 1700. By then, significant obstacles, many 

quite creative, had been erected, and the threat was contained.69 MND-SW first delayed, then 

stopped, the remaining convoy of some 75 passenger buses short of Banja Luka. 

The following day, MND-SW again inspected and closed the special police barracks at Bare 

Barracks and dispersed its occupants after disarming them. Member of the Presidency Krajisnik, 
153

RS Prime Minister Gojko Klickovic, and sometime Interior Minister Kijac, along with about 100 

other armed hardliners who had arrived in Banja Luka the day before to direct the SDS rally, 

were surrounded in a hotel in Banja Luka by pro-Plavsic crowds. Deputy High Representative 

Jacques Klein, described by Richard Holbrooke as having possessed “a flair for the sort of 

forceful, even melodramatic performance that impressed the people of the region,”70 negotiated 

their extraction under humiliating terms. Members of the largest group were disarmed and 

evacuated by SFOR. They were first taken to the MND-SW headquarters, however, and 

screened by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to discover 

if there were any indicted war criminals among them. A number were found to be members of 

the Special Police Antiterrorist Brigade stationed in Doboj.71 As a result of general obstruction 

and the failure to account for their role on the 8th and 9th, the Doboj detachment was eventually 

placed under a total training and movement ban and effectively closed down.72

Krajisnik would not leave without Kijac, apparently fearing his arrest. Ultimately, both 

were permitted to go by President Plavsic and her security adviser, Major Lukac, the same 

Special Police officer who had been responsible for seizing the Banja Luka police station 

earlier in the month. Klickovik left last of all on his own. The hardline attempt to disrupt the 

municipal elections had failed. The subsequent elections provided the first effective challenge 

to monolithic SDS power, even though President Plavsic had been unable to form an opposition 

party in time to compete. Clark’s aggressive strategy and SFOR’s actions again were not well 

received by Secretary of Defense Cohen. Observing a lapse in the Secretary’s composure during 

a subsequent briefing on the Banja Luka “battle of the buses,” Clark asked directly if he were 

not within the Secretary’s intent. “Just barely,” Clark says the secretary answered, “looking at 

me piercingly.”73

Back in Bosnia, while preparations were proceeding for the elections, Klein and Shinseki 

kept up the pressure on the SRT. On 8 September, Ambassador Klein and General Shinseki 

wrote to Member of the Presidency Krajisnik to request broadcast time from the SRT network 

provided for under the Udrigovo Tower Agreement. The letter also warned against editing the 

material provided by the network, something that had occurred previously. The letter received 

a “flippant” response from a subordinate administrator of SRT, Mr. Miroslav Toholj, the SRT

General Director. On 10 September, Westendorp and Shinseki replied with an ultimatum and a 

deadline for compliance by 1800 the 12th. On the 11th, a conciliatory reply was received from 

Krajisnik, and on the 13th, Mr. Toholj and the network editor in chief, Mr. Vukovic, participated 

in an MSAG meeting.74 In closing the meeting, Westendorp added a threat. He indicated that 

the prior warning remained in force and that another incident would be followed by action. 

Municipal elections took place on the 13th and 14th. SFOR played a major role supporting 

the OSCE, which was the lead agency involved.75 Military officers provided staff skills to a Joint 

Election Operations Center and the communications connectivity so OSCE could coordinate 

activities in polling places throughout Bosnia. SFOR worked with OSCE to identify polling 

stations and to reconnoiter, analyze, and in some cases improve voter routes to and from the 

election sites. Election issues were incorporated into the SFOR information campaign. SFOR 

soldiers transported and provided security for election materials (ballots) before and after 

voting. Most important, SFOR increased the security of the area by carefully scheduling unit 

rollover. By providing for an extended overlap between incoming and outgoing units, SFOR 

increased its overall strength by six battalions (4,000 troops76) during the election season. All this 

was done while the confrontations over the communications towers and the composition of the 

government of the Republika Srpska remained extremely volatile. Media affairs would require 

attention first.

After the municipal elections, SRT adhered to the High Representative’s warning until 

the end of the month. On 28 September, however, SRT broadcast a distorted interview with 
154

Judge Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY. At that point, Westendorp requested that 

the Secretary General and SACEUR direct COMSFOR to take possession of the towers.77 SRT

quickly published an apology and rebroadcast the unedited tape, but Westendorp’s patience 

was exhausted. Clark, who was in the United States, obtained Secretary of Defense Cohen’s 

permission to use American troops and ordered Shinseki to execute plans to seize the towers. 

Shinseki objected and required an order in writing. Clark obliged.78 Forces of MND-SE and 

MND-N seized the network towers in Udrigovo, Leotar, Tebovic, and Dugi Neive in near 

simultaneous actions on the morning of 1 October. Westendorp and Javier Solana’s Spanish 

countrymen assigned to SFOR featured prominently in the action. Perception of shared risk is 

a principle of coalition operations.79

The seizure of the television towers seems to have been the end of the era of good feeling in 

the Principals group. Friction involved both a concern that the High Representative had gone 

his own way in seizing the towers and a general sense that the Principals no longer served 

as a forum for strategic planning. There was also bad feeling on the part of the Office of the 

High Representative (OHR) consequent to the deaths on 17 September of German Ambassador 

Gerd Wagner, the Senior Deputy High Representative, and four members of the OHR Staff in 

the crash of a Ukranian helicopter. The US had only recently denied free helicopter support 

to the OHR, and the OHR office had turned to the Ukranians, whose costs, and presumably 

maintenance standards, were lower. The loss of the popular Wagner and the others was an 

event that cast a long shadow on SFOR-OHR relations.80 Notably, Special Representative Kai 

Eide began meeting regularly with General Shinseki to coordinate their positions with a view 

to continued long-term cooperation between the IPTF and SFOR. On 13 October, Shinseki and 

Eide sent a letter to the High Representative reporting on the success of the joint checkpoint 

removal policy.81 They then proposed that it was time to create a common vehicle license plate 

as the next step to enhancing freedom of movement. The London Conference had mandated the 

common license plate the previous December. Implementation would be announced in January 

and would require a good bit of energy, mostly on the civil side, through the first half on 1998.

For his part, COMSFOR was not entirely pleased with his new communications 

responsibilities. The difficulty was that the SACEUR’s orders had involved not only securing 

the sites but also assuming responsibility for their operation (although SFOR would insist that 

day-to-day operations remain a responsibility of SRT technicians). The High Representative 

now demanded a total reconstitution of the organization of the SRT network, separating it from 

political control as the price of return. Krajisnik simply ignored the demand. The OHR had no 

alternative position, so SFOR had to continue to protect five new fixed sites until the following 

summer and operate a television network to boot. That, in the short run, was a challenge. It 

added a whole new dimension to SFOR’s tasks, and it indicated the extent to which SFOR’s 

mission had changed from peace enforcement to participation in nation-building. 

On the weekend of 18 and 19 October 1997, SRT technicians sabotaged a key relay station at a 

Republika Srpska military facility on Mount Zep. This cut off the restructured network flow from 

Banja Luka to the southern part of the eastern leg of Republika Srpska. SFOR seized that tower 

too. SFOR could only call on psychological operations “Commando Solo” aircraft to broadcast 

an explanation of the failure of the system until restoration of SRT broadcasting by satellite could 

be arranged. Broadcasting resumed on 2 November. SRT’s network was then fully functioning 

under international supervision with the point of origin in Banja Luka. Banja Luka SRT, like 

Banja Luka’s police, agreed to restructure in accordance with the High Representative’s terms. 

Pressure continued to be applied to the Republika Srpska Special Police in a deliberate stepby-step fashion, avoiding major confrontations by dealing with malcontents piecemeal. The 

most significant step was probably the decertification of the Doboj Special Police Detachment 

Number 5 on 10 November already mentioned above. Doboj had long been a center of hardline 
155

resistance to Dayton. However, short of bringing the Interior Ministry under control, little was 

accomplished in converting the Special Police to a more democratic gendarmerie in terms of 

numbers and activity. 

RS National Assembly elections were held on 22 and 23 November. SFOR again provided 

area security, logistics support, and planning skills. The outcome of the election marked a major 

turning. The SDS lost its control over the Republika Srpska Assembly, winning only 27 percent 

of the vote.82 President Plavsic’s party, the SNS, won 16 percent. The SDS elected the President 

of the Assembly, but a coalition calling itself SLOGA (Unity) eventually elected Milorad Dodik, 

a moderate Independent Social Democrat, as Prime Minister. The assembly also voted to move 

its meetings into Banja Luka, where, it happens, they had held their first postwar session before 

decamping for Jahorina, near Pale.

By the National Assembly elections in November, the international community had 

successfully suppressed the activities of SDS hardliners in three key areas of civil control. The 

RS Army (Vojska Republika Srpska or VRS) had remained aloof from the intraparty struggle. 

The IPTF and SFOR had taken the civil and Special Police under control to face progressive 

restructuring along democratic lines or subsequent disbandment. The international community, 

using the troops and technicians from SFOR (the latter often hastily trained by Armed Forces 

Radio in Germany), had assumed control of the Republika Srpska television broadcast media 

to turn it from a propaganda arm of the SDS into a more open forum under the control of 

professional journalists. While all these things were being done, the majority of the tactical 

forces were conducting inspections to ensure continued compliance with the military provisions 

by all the Entity armed forces and Special Police. The outcome of the November elections broke 

the power of the SDS Party in Republika Srpska, although the hardline SDS remained the largest 

single vote getter and still was in 2001. 

There are some interesting operational aspects to these actions. First, they were carried out 

according to a general operational concept designed to undermine the power of the principal 

opponents to the General Framework Agreement by establishing the rule of law, thus undermining 

their ability to act with impunity, while maintaining the strength of the coalition cohesion for 

the long term. Alliance cohesion, in General Shinseki’s eyes, represented the friendly center of 

gravity, while the ability to act with impunity represented the enemy’s. To establish the rule of 

law, it was necessary to undermine the structural pillars of the hardliners’ monolithic power: 

the army, the specialist and civil police, and the media, and this had to be done in conjunction 

with other agencies each with its own view of the agenda, and a senior NATO commander 

in Mons who sometimes pushed the tempo of events faster than the commander in Sarajevo 

found comfortable. Sometimes the process was not pretty. Nonetheless, in the fall campaign, 

SFOR, the IPTF, and OHR managed to control or contain events, exploiting the opportunities 

offered by the Entity constitutional struggle. They could remain evenhanded because the 

overreaction of the hardliners when their control was threatened provided the justification 

needed to deal harshly with them. In short, the internationals exploited their opponent’s 

mistakes and miscalculations. Each SFOR tactical action was carried out as a military operation 

with proper attention to prior planning and disciplined execution by overwhelming force. The 

enemy response lacked such disciplined method and execution. By 1997, all sides to the internal 

struggle had learned to marshal the offensive power of the mob. The unruly, even violent crowd 

was merely something of a drive-by shooting in its efforts to deter a first-class army. Tactically 

and structurally, however, SFOR’s divisions had to adapt to this form of opposition.83 SFOR 

itself generally planned and issued its orders in conventional ways, coordinating the action of its 

three divisions and reinforcing them as required. “Forces, not force” worked most of the time, 

though when intelligence was lacking or anticipation inadequate, as at Brcko, hardliners could 

still win a round.
156

The summer and fall events in the RS showed the power of the operational echelon, even 

within the limits of national reservations and prohibitions on shifting units, to attain synergy 

within the entire force. By assigning critical missions to national forces fully willing and able to 

accomplish them, and using others for more marginal but no less necessary duties, much could 

be done. Some nations were willing to arrest persons indicted for war crimes. Others were not. 

As it turned out, those who were not were content to live with its being done without bolting the 

alliance, at least if they did not have to take a public position on the question. Moreover, their 

soldiers were normally available for derivative security duties, post facto, even if they would 

not take part directly in apprehension operations. SFOR could provide enough operational 

reinforcement to ensure the success of the MND-SW takeover of the Banja Luka police and 

command and control to insure the foiling of the Banja Luka “Bus Ride.” The divisions proved 

capable of redeploying forces tactically, concentrating effectively based on accurate real-time 

intelligence, and coordinating actions in time rather than space. SFOR conducted a distributed 

operation superbly. Tactical execution, for the most part, was innovative and effective. The 

limited gains of police restructuring paid off when MND-SW was able to turn local security 

over to the Banja Luka police and the IPTF monitors and attend to the military business in the 

countryside. The actions of 8 and 9 September were the decisive battle of the fall campaign.

The actions of the SFOR forces throughout the summer and fall of 1997 indicated a broader 

interpretation of the competence of the military commanders and, by implication, willingness 

of their political masters in the North Atlantic Council to involve themselves more and more 

in implementing the civil provisions of the General Framework Agreement. This, it must be 

pointed out, was entirely consistent with the second set of authorities granted the IFOR, and 

subsequently the SFOR Commander, “to fulfill its supporting tasks, within the limits of its 

assigned principal tasks and available resources, and on request.”84 This increased activism was 

permitted largely because of the success of the preceding year and because the opponents of the 

Dayton Accords were unable or unwilling to mobilize forces more serious than orchestrated 

mobs and passive bureaucratic resistance that gave way before force majeure. 

It is important to observe that the SFOR commander was required to be, in Clausewitz’ 

words, “a statesman as well as a general.” Most of the commander’s time was spent on politics: 

the politics of achieving a working cohesion and unity of purpose among the Principals and 

the politics of dealing on a daily basis with the leaders of the Entities, leading, cajoling, and on 

occasion threatening with sufficient moral authority that the object of the threat had no doubt of 

its sincerity. Moreover, commanding an international staff of senior general officers, COMSFOR 

was still required to persuade his principal subordinates as much as to give direction. The arts 

of negotiation and compromise, persuasion and suasion were as essential in this realm as the 

arts of war.

At the end of 1997, much remained to be done in Bosnia. The RS election was over, but in 

December there was no way to know how hard it would be to seat a new reformist government. 

Success was by no means certain as the Balkan winter set in and relationships between the 

military and civil implementation organizations continued to show strain. The PIC Conference 

met in Bonn in December and the report issued on the 10th is remarkable for its tone, which 

dropped the pretense of voluntarism and became directive and mandatory. (The failure to 

pass new laws to implement Annex 7 of the Peace Agreement “will not be condoned.”) [Emphasis 

added] Moreover, after hectoring the representatives of the Entities and common institutions to 

take up their responsibilities under the treaty, this ad hoc gathering of powerful nations finally 

decided to grasp the nettle and empower the High Representative to administer the country 

as the protectorate it was rapidly becoming. The last section of the PIC report addressed 

the High Representative. Cloaking his new powers in the language of the sophists, the PIC 

empowered him, through interpretation of his power as “final authority in the theater regarding 
157

interpretation of the Agreement on the Civilian Implementation of the Peace Settlement,” to 

issue binding decisions on:

1. Timing, location, and chairmanship of meetings of the common institutions;

2. Interim measures to take effect when parties are unable to reach agreement, which 

will remain in force until the Presidency or Council of Ministers has adopted a 

decision consistent with the Peace Agreement on the issue concerned; and,

3. Other measures to ensure implementation of the Peace Agreement throughout 

Bosnia and Herzegovina and its Entities, as well as the smooth running of the 

common institutions. Such measures may include actions against persons holding 

public office or officials who are absent from meetings with good cause or who are 

found by the High Representative to be in violation of legal commitments made 

under the Peace Agreement or the terms for its implementation.85

In short, the High Representative could now dictate laws and fire officials, even those with 

an electoral mandate won in ballots administered by the rules and under the auspices of the 

OSCE. The power to dictate law and fire elected officeholders without review pretty much 

constitute the powers of a protecting power, however strenuously the international community 

would continue to deny a protectorate existed. Carlos Westendorp would be very sparing, 

indeed, in using his powers. He imposed his first law, the Law on Citizenship, within the week, 

on the 16th of December. He would fire his first elected official, Pero Raguz, Mayor of Stolac, 

on 4 March. His most important firing would be of the elected RS President, in March 1999. By 

comparison, his successor Wolfgang Petritsch would remove 22 officials from office in one day 

in November 1999, but by then NATO had defeated the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) 

in an air war and Croatian President Tudjman was on his deathbed, thus putting into question 

much of the external support that had kept Bosnian Serb and Croat resistance viable for so long. 

The international community had put into place the mechanism of a protectorate but remained 

judicious in its application, in part no doubt because of the inhibitions of Western liberal 

culture in which the international leaders had been raised, and also because of the community’s 

dependence, in the final analysis, on Bosnian structures to carry out the Western program. 

Bosnia continued to be a grand experiment in political and social engineering by powers only 

partially committed to the outcome.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 6

1. At Sintra it was “declared that the High Representative has the right to curtail or suspend any media 

network or programme whose output is in persistent and blatant contravention of either the spirit or letter of the 

Peace Agreement.” Office of the High Representative, Document, Communiqué; Political Declaration from Ministerial 

Meeting of the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council, Sintra, 30 May 1997, para 70. Available at http:

//www.ohr.int/docu/d 970530a.htm.

2. Office of the High Representative, Document, Bonn Peace Implementation Conference 1997; Bosnia and 

Herzegovina 1998: Self-Sustaining Structures, Conclusions, Bonn, 10 December 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int/

docu/u971210a.htm.

3. In a press conference with Ambassador Farrand after the Brcko riot, Ambassador Klein told a confrontational 

audience of reporters, “I have a mandate from my government to try to make this process work. I will do 

everything I can in my power to make it work.” The quotation is interesting principally because as Deputy 

High Representative, Klein’s warrant would be presumed to derive from other quarters. Office of the High 
158

Representative, Briefing, Press Conference by the Principal Deputy High Representative, Amb. Jacques Paul Klein and 

Deputy High Representative/Supervisor for Brcko, Amb. Robert W. Farrand, Brcko, 02 September 1997. Available at http:

//www.ohr.int:81/press/p970902b.htm. For continuity of Klein’s view, see United Nations, Press Release, SC/6973, 12 

December 2000, Special Representative For Bosnia and Herzegovina Briefs Security Council, Says Recent Events Provide 

‘Historic Opportunity’ to Close Tragic Decade.

4. The author has known Wesley Clark for over 35 years.

5. General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Conflict (New York: Public 

Affairs, 2001), 80.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., 84.

8. Ibid., 86. The message of the description is that the opponent is confronted at selected times and places with 

overwhelming force so intimidating that he gives way.

9. Ibid., 85-86.

10. The author discussed the situation in Bosnia with General Clark on two occasions, once with a group of 

students soon after Clark came to Mons, once personally in his office after the War in Kosovo. Two comments stand 

out in memory. In the first, Clark observed that no real progress would be made in Bosnia until the three wartime 

leaders, Milosevic, Tudjman, and Izetbegovic left the stage, something that occurred finally only after Clark himself 

had retired. The other was the comment indicated above, that Clark himself “had to be” the real COMSFOR.

11. See question of Colin Soloway, of US News, in Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 3 September 1997, 1100 hours, 

Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. See also question of Reporter [not named] concerning 

a comment made by second [sic] Deputy High Representative Hanns Schumacher to the Frankfurter Algemaine 

Zeitung, concerning his role working with Westendorp and Klein in Office of the High Representative, Interview, 

Interview with Jacques Paul Klein, Deputy High Representative; I don’t care about the ethnic picture, Reporter, 12 February 

1998. Available at http://www.194.215.227.4/press/i980212a.htm.

12. Colonel Jim Greer, then commanding the 1st 77th Armored Task Force near Brcko attended a briefing 

for General Clark in Brkco soon after Clark’s assumption of command. Clark told the Commander, MND North, 

Major General David Grange, that the strategic objective for the year was the reelection of President Plavsic, and 

the decisive points were gaining control of the Special Police, controlling the hardline media, and a successful 

information operations program in the RS. Greer, commanding the US area of main effort, said he and the division 

commander took Clark’s prescription as their commander’s intent. Information provided by Colonel Jim Greer, 

Director School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, November 2001.

13. Comments of Major Blakeley, SFOR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 August 1997, 1100 

hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo The various letters providing notification to the 

Entity leadership on 7 August are in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization 

Force Commander’s Journal, Book 1, 1-10 August 1997. (The change in form is indicative of the transfer from General 

Crouch to General Shinseki.)

14. This would occur only in July 2000. See HQ SFOR, CPIC NR-00.36, Press Release, Transfer of supervisory 

responsibility of the Republika Srpska special police service from SFOR to the IPTF, 6 July 2000. Available at http://

www.nato.int/sfor/advisory/2000/t000706a.htm.

15. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 15 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo, describes the measures imposed by COMSFOR in coordination with the IPTF.

16. Assertion by Mr. Alex Ivanko, IPTF, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 21 August 1997, 1100 

hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.
159

17. After Ministarstov Unutrušnjih Poslova--Ministry of Interior.

18. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Article II, “Cessation of Hostilities,” para. 1.

19. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, Book 

2, 11-20 August 1997. A good account is also given in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 18 August 1997, 

1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

20. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 19 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

21. HQ SFOR, CJ3, Briefing, SFOR Lessons Learned: Dealing with Managed Violence in a Changing Environment, n.d. 

[Fall 1997] in HQ USAREUR, History Office, Shinseki Papers, misc. briefing. This splendid briefing, drafted under 

supervision of MG J. B. Burns, presents a detailed analysis of four fall events, Operation SHIVA, and organized 

riots at Bijeljina and Brcko, and the Udrigovo Tower.

22. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 20 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

23. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 21 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

24. Office of the High Representative, Document, Report of the High Representative for Implementation of the 

Bosnian Peace Agreement to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 16 October 1997, para. 57. Available at http:

//www.ohr.int/reports/r971016a.htm.

25. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 20 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

26. Steering Board, Peace Implementation Council, Communique: Political Declaration from Ministerial Meeting of 

the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council, Sintra, 30 May 1997, para. 70.

27. Letter from Carlos Westendorp to H. E. Momcilo Krajisnik, dated 25 August 1997, refers to the earlier 

letter. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, Book 

3, 21-31 August 1997. Also, HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, SRT/Media 

Restructuring, Book I. There is also a large file of unprocessed documents on the subject of media affairs in the 

USAREUR History Office, Shinseki files, file number 3430, Radio & TV.

28. Quoted by Duncan Bullivant, OHR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 22 August 1997, 1100 

hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

29. A point already made by Carl Bildt at Sintra. Bildt, Peace Journey, 356.

30. Maj. [Colin] Blakeley, SFOR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 22 August 1997, 1100 hours, 

Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

31. Duncan Bullivant in response to a question, Ibid.

32. Letter from Carlos Westendorp to His Excellency Javier Solana, dated 25 August 1997, in HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, Book 3, 21-31 August 1997. 

Also, HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group Special Topic Notebook, SRT/Media Restructuring, Book I.

33. COMSFOR to H. E. Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, dated August 26, 1997, Ibid. Klein’s 

involvement, indeed possible instigation of the whole business, is a conclusion drawn by the author from comments 

made by Ambassador Klein in our phone conversation.

34. Office of the High Representative, letter to General W. Crouch, Commander, SFOR 22 July 1997, in HQ 
160

USAREUR History Office, Crouch Papers, folder 3960.06, OHR Ltr to GENERAL CROUCH, 22 Jul 97, CI-07-037.

35. Office of the High Representative, Document, Report of the High Representative for Implementation of the 

Bosnian Peace Agreement to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 16 October 1997, para. 56. Also, NATO, UN 

Secretary General S/1997/718, 18 September, 1997, Letter dated 12 September 1997 from the Secretary-General of the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization addressed to the Secretary General [UN]. Available at http://www.otan.nato.int/ifor/

un/u970912a.htm. Both confirm authority required NAC approval.

36. Letter from Carlos Westendorp to General Eric Shinseki, Commander SFOR in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, SRT/Media Restructuring, Book 1.

37. Briefing, SFOR Lessons Learned: Dealing with Managed Violence in a Changing Environment. Information 

provided by Colonel Jim Greer.

38. Clark, Waging Modern War, 88; Letter from COMSFOR to Mr. Momcilo Krajisnik, Member of Collective 

Presidency, dated 31 August 1997 in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, 

SRT/Media Restructuring, Book I.

39. Clark, Waging Modern War, 86.

40. Briefing, SFOR Lessons Learned: Dealing with Managed Violence in a Changing Environment.

41. “For the record, I want to make it crystal clear that the UN was not in anyway whatsoever involved in 

any alleged attempts to take over any police facilities.” Liam McDowell, IPTF in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press 

Conferences 29 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

42. See comments by Major Riley, SFOR, Ibid., and in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conferences 28 August 

1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

43. Department of Defense, News, DoD News Briefing, Thursday, August 28, 1997-2 p.m. (EDT), Capt. Mike 

Doubleday, USN, DASD (PA). Available at http://www.defenseline.mil/news/Aug1997/t08281997 _t0828asd.html.

44. NATO, UN Secretary General S/1997/718, 18 September 1997, Letter dated 12 September 1997 from the 

Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) addressed to the Secretary-General. Monthly reports 

for September (S/1997/718), October (S/1997/794) and November (S/1997/893) all address the joint SFOR-IPTF 

inspection programs.

45. Clark, Waging Modern War, 86.

46. See particularly questions put to Robert Farrand and Jacques Klein by the representative of the Srpska 

Republika News Agancy (SRNA) at a subsequent Press Conference in Office of the High Representative, Briefing, 

Press Briefing; Press Conference by the Principal Deputy High Representative, Amb. Jacques Paul Klein and Deputy High 

Representative/Supervisor for Brcko, Amb. Robert W. Farrand, Brcko, 2 September 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int:

81/press/ p970902b.htm.

47. Colonel Greer told the author that the company had secured three of four sites before running into 

trouble--two radio broadcast antennas, and the local police station. They did not secure the Special Police 

detachment before the violence erupted.

48. E-mail to author in response to question.

49. Master Sergeant Mark Schulz and Pfc. Todd Edwards, “Soldiers fend off rioters,” Story and photo 

reproduced from the Talon; Friday, 5 Sept 1997; Vol 3, #36. On line at the Society of the 1st Infantry Division: http:

//www.rrmtf.org/firstdivision/society/bridgehead/bhs97/riot.htm. The Talon is the Task Force Eagle daily paper.

50. Briefing, SFOR Lessons Learned: Dealing with Managed Violence in a Changing Environment has an excellent 

analysis with diagrams showing the relative positions of the US forces.
161

51. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conferences, 28 and 29 August 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information 

Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

52. Colonel Greer to author. Greer observed that the SOP was intended for resettlement disputes more than 

situations of this magnitude.

53. James Kitfield, “Brcko: A name to remember,” National Journal, Vol. 29, No. 50 (December 13, 1997), 2524-

2525.

54. MAJ Blakeley, SFOR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conferences, 4 September 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition 

Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Department of Defense, News, DoD News Briefing, Tuesday, 

September 2, 1997, 2:13 p.m., Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD (PA). Available at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep1997/

t09021997_t09011997asd.html.

55. General Clark to the author; Clark, Waging Modern War, 87-88.

56. The heat with which General Clark responded to a comment at a September briefing about the decision to 

remove the guard is indicative of the symbolic value given the act. See comments by General Clark in HQ SFOR, 

Transcript: Joint Press Conference by NATO Secretary General, Dr. Javier Solana & SACEUR, Gen. Clark, 12 September 

1997, 1415 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo. Available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/ 

trans/1997/t970912b.htm. According to General Clark, among those who called him, was an irate US Secretary of 

State. General Clark to author; Clark, Waging Modern War, 86-88.

57. Letter COMSFOR to Member of the Presidency Krajisnik, dated 31 August 1997, in HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, Book 3, 21-31 August 1997.

58. Briefing, SFOR Lessons Learned: Dealing with Managed Violence in a Changing Environment.

59. Clark, Waging Modern War, 89.

60. Copy of Memorandum of Agreement for Release of Undrigovo Tower in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, Media Letters.

61. Office of the High Representative, Press, Office of the High Representative & Stabilization Force, Press Release, 

Media Agreement Reached, Sarajevo, 2 September 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int:81/press/p970902a.htm. 

62. Lee Hockstader, “US Troops Pull Back From Bosnian Bridge, Stir Debate Over Reasons and Results,” 

Washington Post, September 5, 1997, A27. Hockstader’s analysis is very good and well balanced. Editorial slant 

notwithstanding, the ICG publications on Bosnia are generally worth reading and considering.

63. Clark, Waging Modern War, 89-91.

64. Ibid., 91.

65. Ibid., 91-92.

66. Ibid., 93-95.

67. The account above is based upon discussions with MG Julian Burns, SFOR ACOS-Ops, at the time; a 

speech given by General Shinseki to an AUSA luncheon group, transcribed by LTC William O. Odom; and an 

account written by MG David L. Grange, “Battle of the Buses” (both in possession of author); accounts in SFOR in 

HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conferences, 8-10 September 1997, 1100 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo; and two OHR Press releases: Office of the High Representative, Press Release, OHR and 

SFOR Act to Prevent Intimidation at Banja Luka, Sarajevo, 8 September 1997. Available at http://www. ohr.int/press/

p970908a.htm, and Office of the High Representative, Press Briefing, Joint Press Conference with Ambassador Klein, 

OHR Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo, 10 September 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int/
162

press/p970910a.htm. General Burns also provided an hourly account of the movement of the Serb bus convoys and 

action in Banja Luka based on reports at SFOR.

68. Information provided by Colonel Greer.

69. Described in Briefing, SFOR Lessons Learned: Dealing with Managed Violence in a Changing Environment.

70. Holbrooke, To End a War, 349.

71. Office of the High Representative, Briefing, Joint Press Conference with Ambassador Klein, OHR; Coalition 

Press Information Centre, Holiday Inn, Sarajevo, 10 September 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int.81/press/

p970910a.htm.

72. Letter from COMSFOR to General Goran Saric, Commander, Police Anti-Terrorist Brigade, dated 10 

November 1997 in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Special Topic Notebook, Plavsic and Krajisnik 

Letters.

73. Clark, Waging Modern War, 98-99.

74. Letters in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebooks, Stabilization Force Commander’s 

Journal, Book 4, September 1997.

75. For a summary, see slide, Election Support, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiative Group, Briefing for 

General Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conducted on 11 October 1997. Slide provided author by 

Lieutenant Colonel Rocky Gay, CG’s Speechwriter.

76. See comments by General Clark in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference by NATO Secretary General, 

Dr. Javier Solana & SACEUR, Gen. Clark, 12 September 1997, 1415 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, Holiday 

Inn, Sarajevo. Available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/trans/1997/t970912b.htm

77. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conferences, 1 October 1997, 1130 hours, Coalition Press Information Centre, 

Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

78. Clark, Waging Modern War, 100-101. There are two documents, apparently an exchange of letters, stating the 

two commander’s positions for posterity among General Shinseki’s papers in the USAREUR History Office.

79. Ibid. US, Italian, and Spanish units captured the towers.

80. Major General K. J. Drewienkiewicz, who arrived shortly afterwards to take up his duties as Military 

Advisor to the High Representative, is the source of the impact of this event on the OHR. He points out that the 

loss of five members of the OHR Staff had an equivalent effect of the loss of many more SFOR soldiers because OHR 

was such a small and tight organization.

81. Letter to Ambassador Westendorp, signed by General Eric Shinseki and Special Representative Kai Eide, 

dated 13 October 1997, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Commander’s Initiatives Group, 

Notebooks, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, October 1997.

82. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, May 1997, 

Bosnia Peace Operation--Progress Toward Achieving the Dayton Agreement’s Goals, Chapter 3:1.2.

83. One example of this adaptation is the fact the Colonel Greer’s armored task force was mounted principally 

in High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles rather than M-1 tanks. It was in this circumstance that military 

police companies could be employed as maneuver units by armored battalion commanders.

84. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Article VI, para. 3.

85. Office of the High Representative, Document, Bonn Peace Implementation Conference 1997; Bosnia and 

Herzegovina 1998: Self-Sustaining Structures, Conclusions, Bonn, 10 December 1997. Available at http://www.ohr.int/

docu/u971210a.htm.
163

CHAPTER 7

STALEMATE AND CRISIS WITH FRY

Two general impressions stand out in reading the documents that record the development 

of military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1998. First is the optimism of the summer at 

the same time the shadow of events in Montenegro and Kosovo was falling slowly over the 

international efforts to create a peaceful Bosnian republic.1 Second, against this optimism is the 

persistence of both Croat and Serb hardline resistance to implementation of various aspects of 

the Dayton Peace Accords, particularly to the policy of minority returns.2 The incident in Drvar 

discussed in Chapter 1 was just such an event. Failure to live up to obligations to promote returns 

undertaken in the Sarajevo Declaration shows a similar resistance in kind, if not degree, on the 

part of the Sarajevo Muslims.3 The seemingly intractable problem of returns was exacerbated by 

the lack of available housing, that is, standing units to which eligible parties could be returned 

without displacing squatters who themselves had been driven from their homes by the shifting 

fortunes of the recent war. Forcing the issue of returns in one locale inevitably sparked problems 

in another. Attempts by the international community to speed returns in 1998 produced new 

stresses in the implementation structure that were traceable to the maintenance of independent 

international military and civil authorities with overlapping jurisdictions and differing views on 

the desirable limits of Stabilization Force’s (SFOR’s) involvement in maintaining Bosnian civil 

order. 

Nonetheless, the prospects for civil implementation looked as hopeful as they ever had. 

In December 1997, President Clinton abandoned his policy of setting time limits on US 

participation in SFOR. Future commitments would be open-ended in time, if not forces. The 

tumultuous events of 1997 broke the monopoly of Serb hardliners on power in the government 

of the Republika Srpska. In February, with the development of a more moderate political 

regime, international aid began to appear in the heretofore relatively neglected Serb half of 

the Bosnian state, and with it the promise of a more compliant attitude toward achievement 

of the international community’s agenda for Bosnia-Herzegovina. In his July 1998 report 

to the United Nations, the High Representative, newly empowered since the Bonn Peace 

Implementation Council (PIC) meeting the previous December, was unrestrained. He recited 

a record of accomplishment in a host of endeavors.4 These included progress in the arrest and 

surrender of indicted war criminals; a handful of economic measures; and successful adoption 

of common license plates, a common currency, a flag, and a national crest. It is, of course, a 

fact that Westendorp had imposed the last four using his Bonn powers. They cannot be said to 

represent a growing Bosnian political consensus even though they were presented that way. All 

these individual achievements were led by the “consolidation of the position of the Government 

in the Republika Srpska, the emergence of greater pluralism in the politics of both Entities, and 

improvement in the economic situation across the country.”5

 Mr. Westendorp followed his midyear report of success with a warning: “A crucial moment 

in the peace implementation process has now been reached.” Civilian implementation depended 

still on the secure environment promised by a continued military presence. The NATO decision 

in February to extend SFOR’s mandate beyond June 1998 was therefore welcome. The situation 

in Kosovo gave cause for concern. Still, “Two and a half years on from Dayton, the great prize 

of a sustainable peace is within sight--if the international community is willing to see the task 

through to the end.”6 Westendorp went on to insist, in what was becoming a litany, that it was 

time for Bosnia-Herzegovina to assume responsibility for its own future, counseling that the 

patience of the international community was running out.

Fate decreed that affairs in Bosnia would be held hostage increasingly to those of its neighbor, 
164

Serbia, or more properly the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Perhaps they always had 

been, as they were to events in Croatia. FRY President Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb nationalism 

had been a major influence on the outbreak of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as had the Islamic 

nationalism of Bosnian President Izetbegovic and the Croatian ambitions of President Franjo 

Tudjman. Milosevic’s support had been essential to the Bosnian Serbs in sustaining their 

operations. His cooperation and willingness to coerce his Bosnian Serb proteges had been vital 

to the success at Dayton. Milosevic had acted as a mediator between RS factions in 1997 and in 

early 1998. The developing crisis in Serbia’s Kosovo province was a reminder that the problem 

of Bosnia was a Balkan problem, although there was little those serving in Bosnia could do to 

influence directly the wider context of their situation. The deteriorating relationship between 

the international community, particularly the NATO nations, and President Milosevic’s regime 

greatly increased the need to insulate affairs in Bosnia from those of the neighboring states. This 

challenge would only get larger and more complex as Milosevic experienced domestic political 

difficulties and took the offensive in suppressing the unrest in his would-be breakaway province. 

SFOR was looking over its shoulder continually to events in Kosovo as the year went on. 

Problems in implementation remained. There were significant difficulties with minority 

returns, especially in Federation territory at Drvar, Mostar, and Stolac. A new comprehensive 

agreement on police reform in the Republika Srpska, highly necessary, was pursued. Still, actual 

progress was glacial. In cooperation with the International Police Task Force (IPTF), SFOR 

conducted a major operation against the police in Pale to keep the RS police compliant. Then, 

beginning in August, the Commander, SFOR (COMSFOR) invested significant energy attempting 

to sever the connection between the leadership of the Croat forces of the Federation Army and the 

Croatian Government and national army. This experience and subsequent concerns about the 

military implications of the 1998 fall election of a hardline president of the Republika Srpska led to 

a new program, implemented under Shinseki’s successor, directed toward professionalization 

(in a Western sense) of the leadership of the Entity armed forces, enforced under provisions of 

the general authorities granted by Annex 1A of the General Framework Agreement for Peace 

(GFAP). Implementation of the GFAP continued to be a process, not an event.

The most notable change to the circumstances in Bosnia in 1998 was the empowerment 

of the High Representative by the December 1997 Bonn meeting of the PIC. Compared to 

COMSFOR, the High Representative had always been at a practical disadvantage when it 

came to imposing progress on reluctant Entity governments,7 though he had some ability to 

manipulate economic aid and apply limited diplomatic sanctions. The Sintra Conference had 

authorized Westendorp to take control of the media. He had done so, in that instance getting 

ahead of his fellow Principals. As 1997 ended, the problem of the RS media still festered. With 

the grant of authority to issue laws and fire officials, the Bonn PIC completed the process of 

putting the governing bodies of Bosnia-Herzegovina into international receivership. Still, 

these new powers involved the use of a double-edged sword. A year further on, the political 

advisers at SFOR would call this the “double dependency syndrome.”8 The long-term object of 

the entire international effort was to convince the people and officials of Bosnia-Herzegovina 

to govern themselves as good Europeans. Ruling by fiat, though it might smooth over shortterm problems, by no means served the long-term goal of getting the Bosnians to accept the 

responsibility to govern themselves in accordance with the agreed constitutional framework. It 

let the governing elites off the hook when it came to the compromises that are at the heart of any 

democratic government, and it relieved them of any incentive to make progress on the tough 

issues like refugee return. It also left the international community dependent on SFOR’s muscle 

for enforcement. General Shinseki worried about the effects at the US Army Armor Conference 

in spring 1998. “The constant use of force as the first option,” he said, “erodes the credibility 

of the International Community and perpetuates the perception that democracy only works 
165

with force.”9 Removing an elected official had its problems too, as it turned out. Firing the 

incumbent necessarily implied availability of a better, more cooperative, and equally legitimate 

replacement. These were not always available. Still, for all the difficulties, the alternative of 

inaction was also unacceptable. It would lead nowhere. Use of the High Representative’s new 

political authorities would have to be focused, judicious, and rare. Moreover, the authority 

to employ force still was not granted to the High Representative or his energetic deputies. A 

reverse dual-key system remained in effect in cases of direct coercion in political as opposed to 

security questions.10

With the empowerment of the High Representative, and no doubt consequent to the defeat 

of the Serb hardliners the previous year, SFOR’s priorities shifted even more from the mandated 

military provisions (Annex 1A, Article VI, paragraph 2) to the civil implementation authorities 

(Annex 1A, Article VI, paragraph 3) of the GFAP. Still, the military provisions remained the 

principal justification for SFOR’s continued presence. At Bonn, the PIC “stressed that the 

presence of IFOR and SFOR has been the greatest single contributor to sub-regional security 

since the signing of the Peace Agreement and will continue to be in the short to medium term.”11

In his various reports to the United Nations, the High Representative continued to emphasize 

the vital importance of continued military presence. SFOR remained the essential default force 

for preservation of civil order absent full acceptance of the rule of law. 

There were 10 eventful months between the Bonn PIC and the transfer of SFOR command 

to Shinseki’s successor in October 1998. The SFOR strategy12 for 1998 began to take form with 

an analytic briefing assembled by General Burns about the time of the 1997 elections. He titled 

the briefing “Mandate, Mission, Tasks, and Organization” because the SFOR Operation JOINT 

GUARD mission and mandate, both of which dated from December 1996, increasingly were 

outdated. Burns undertook his study when the SFOR intelligence officer pointed out that the 

commander’s primary information requirements (PIRs) had not changed in a year.13 To generate 

new PIRs, it was first necessary to revalidate the general strategy, and Burns quickly saw that 

conditions alone were transforming SFOR’s actions. It was time to reassess.

Burns concluded that the assessment he and Mike Heredia had done originally for General 

Crouch remained valid. Indeed, specific action had been taken in most cases to underpin the 

various desired lines of operations with plans and programs. Collectively, these suggested the 

need to add, as a derived end state, the goal of deconstructing the single party RS police state 

by establishing a condition of law and order. This, in turn, suggested the way of doing business 

was changing. There was a greater need for specialization, more emphasis on the information 

campaign and acquisition of intelligence (especially human intelligence), revised force structure, 

attention to civil-military cooperation, and use of Special Forces. To Burns, there was a clear 

movement in SFOR’s focus from demilitarization, through containment, to encouragement 

of law and order. That was reflected by expanding SFOR’s engagement, not just with Entity 

military forces, but with police, the media, political leaders, and processes, and to some extent 

with the Entity judicial system. “Where we are going,” Burns concluded, “has a great deal to do 

with how we get there.”14 Guidance soon followed.

In December 1997, following the results of the extraordinary elections in the Republika Srpska, 

General Shinseki briefed the new Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry 

Shelton, on the situation in Bosnia.15 The United States had not yet committed to continue its 

support of SFOR, and Shinseki was concerned about the size and configuration of any future 

force, a question then under study by the NATO staff. Any such force, he said, should be 

much like the current force, built on a core of NATO troops, led by the United States. It should 

be sized according to the tasks required, essentially for doing what SFOR then was doing. It 

required operational and tactical mobility and flexibility. It needed to validate the effectiveness 

of its assigned reserves. Finally, its structure should be modified increasingly to support the 
166

needs of civil implementation. 

Shinseki reported that, on the one hand, the Entities were reluctant to challenge SFOR, 

except locally. On the other hand, they cooperated only under coercion. They would respond to 

pressure. Inflexible leadership, corruption, fear and insecurity, unreformed police, and media 

manipulation blocked implementation of the Dayton Accords. Success required broad reform 

of military, judicial, economic, media, and political institutions and greater effort toward return 

of displaced persons. In most of these efforts, SFOR was presumed to be a supporting, not a 

lead, agency. That was not always the case. Frequently, SFOR promoted increased attention to 

particular tasks, actually the responsibility of other parties, a habit that was sometimes resented. 

In any event, the time required to achieve success in Bosnia could be shortened to the extent that 

the efforts of the international community were harmonized and coordinated. Shinseki saw his 

immediate challenges as helping implement the results of the municipal elections, continuing 

work to reform the media, continuing support to police restructuring, and beginning to confront 

the endemic corruption in both Entities. The last two efforts involved establishing the rule of 

law and undertaking a campaign to raise the public’s expectations of its political figures. 

A week later, General Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), came 

to visit. He provided guidance and his vision to the SFOR staff, many of whom were newly 

assigned. Clark raised three significant points. First, he warned specifically against using the 

term “mission creep.”16 According to the notetaker, Clark “vehemently denied that any occurs,” 

and he insisted that all current actions were within the Dayton Accords. Indeed, he said, he was 

under constant pressure from the North Atlantic Council (NAC) to do even more. Clark’s main 

point seems to have been that any mission creep would be defined more by overextending the 

force’s capabilities than in taking on any particular new task.17 Clark’s view was technically 

correct. Given the open-ended nature of the military annex of the Dayton Accords, there was 

little that could not be brought thereunder, especially if the provisions were given a broad 

reading. Second, the SACEUR mentioned the option, then under consideration by the NAC, 

of adding the Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU), or gendarmerie, to the force package for 

SFOR. He viewed the addition positively, both to augment SFOR numbers (as opposed to 

compensating for reductions) and to ease the problem of close-in security for refugee returns. 

Third, he urged anticipation of the requirements bound to arise for SFOR in response to the 

High Representative’s new Bonn powers. In the near term, he wanted SFOR to concentrate on 

implementing the results of the municipal elections and to watch the “minority contingents” 

(presumably the Entity armed forces) closely.

Both Generals Shinseki and Clark considered implementation of the fall 1997 municipal 

elections the immediate challenge. Implementing election results was a problem because of 

provisions inserted in the election rules by the Dayton Accords to promote refugee returns and 

thus encourage reestablishment of a multiethnic body politic across Bosnia. According to the 

rules, refugees could vote in the district where they had lived in 1991, before the war broke 

out.18 The difficulty was that the demographics of many municipalities had changed drastically. 

Minorities were shifted around willy-nilly by the various efforts at ethnic cleansing conducted 

by all parties to the recent war. The effects were mixed. On the one hand, the result of the rules 

on absentee voting was to provide for election of an 18-member Bosniac delegation to the RS 

Assembly in 1997, a delegation essential to breaking the monolithic power of Serb hardliners.19

On the other hand, the result was often to empower a local government dominated by an ethnic 

group all but gone from an area to govern a citizenry of quite different nationality and in fact 

threatened by the process of minority returns. Srebrenica, the site of perhaps the most notorious 

occasion of a Serb massacre of Bosniac men, was only the most salient example. In the elections 

of 1997, a Bosniac government was returned for Srebrenica, now a majority Serb municipality 

near the border with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It would be June 1999 before the 
167

international community succeeded in seating the government elected in September 1997. On 

the other side of the country was the town of Drvar in the Federation. As outlined in Chapter 

1, Drvar chose a Serb mayor in the 1997 elections. By and large, however, the SFOR mission of 

providing a secure environment for municipalities was a task performed by the multinational 

divisions (MNDs). For the SFOR commander, the first concern of the new year was ensuring 

the inauguration of the new RS Government, and that was by no means as certain at the time as 

it looks in retrospect.

The RS National Assembly elections in November 1997 broke the power of the hardline 

parties but only by a narrow margin. The Srpska Demokratska Stranka (SDS--Serb Democratic 

Party) was still the largest party represented, and the coalition of moderates, as it turned out, 

enjoyed a small working majority. The Plavsic-SDS break had left about half the territory of 

Republika Srpska and most government agencies under effective control of hardliners in Pale, 

apparently led by Tri-President Krajisnik, although strong ties to former President Karadzik 

and Serb leader Milosevic were assumed. A rump assembly had continued to pass legislation 

after President Plavsic had dissolved the legislative body in the summer of 1997.20 Throughout 

the 1997 election campaign, SFOR had convinced the RS army to remain neutral. Now, after the 

vote, the issue had come to a crisis. It was by no means certain that the hardliners would accept 

their loss of authority at the ballot box. Until they did, SFOR assumed that they probably would 

not. SFOR watched and waited, with some anxiety.

On 7 December 1997, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 

announced preliminary results of the RS election. The hardline SDS won only 24 seats. Its even 

more radical ally, the Srpska Radikalna Stranka (SRS--Serb Radical Party) won 15. This meant 

the two parties would not dominate the 83-member assembly, either alone or in combination. 

The Coalition for Single and Democratic Bosnia (Koalicija za cjelovites I demokratsku Bosnu I 

Hercergovinu) led by the Bosniac Party of Democratic Action (Stranka Demokratske Akcije, or SDA)

won 16 seats, the Serb People’s Alliance (Plavsic’s new Party Srpskog narodnog saveza [SNS]) 15, 

the Republika Srpska Socialist Party (Socijalisticka Partija Republike Srpske, or SPRS), led by Zivko 

Radisic, won 9, the Independent Social Democrats (Stranka Nezavisnih Socijaldemokrata Republike 

Srpske, or SNSD), led by eventual Prime Minister Dodik, won 2, and the Social Democrats (Socijal 

Demokratska Partija, or SDP) the final two seats. According to the analysis relied on by the US 

General Accounting Office (GAO), this left the RS National Assembly divided among three 

blocs. The SRS and SDS blocs together controlled 39 seats. The combined Serb opposition held 

26 seats and Federation-based parties had 18.21 The moderates, a loose coalition called SLOGA

(Unity), held the balance of power in the 83-member assembly, but not by much.

On 9 and 10 December 1997, the PIC met in Bonn. On 16December, the High Representative 

invoked his new-old powers and ordered a stalled citizenship law into force on 1 January 1998. 

On 18 December, two Croat persons indicted for war crimes (PIFWCs) were detained. The 

same day, President Clinton announced continued and indefinite US participation in NATO 

operations in Bosnia to follow the end of the existing mandate in June 1998. On 27 December, 

political maneuvers began in Bijeljina, near the border with Serbia, where the new RS National

Assembly conducted its inaugural session. Previously, the Assembly had met in Jahorina 

(near Pale), to which it had decamped from Banja Luka after two sessions in 1996. Bijeljina 

was at least still contested territory. It was also close to Belgrade. President Plavsic nominated 

moderate Mladen Ivanic to be the next prime minister, and Ivanic, an economist, immediately 

began efforts to form a ministry of talents to govern Republika Srpska. The SDS/SRS hardliners 

disrupted the session and did not allow selection of an assembly leadership. A second assembly 

session was scheduled for 12 January 1998.

During the interim, Presidents Plavsic and Krajisnik met to negotiate a modus vivendi. On 

12 January, the assembly elected as leaders Dragon Kalinic as Assembly President, with Nikola 
168

Poplasen and Jovan Mitrovic as his deputies. Kalinic and Poplasen were SDS-SRS hardliners. 

Mitrovic was from the SNS. The assembly was unable to elect a prime minister and adjourned 

until 17 January. Meanwhile, the High Representative continued to move on long-stalled 

political issues. He announced a commission to propose a new national flag and his intention 

to make a decision on the form of a common currency. On the 17th, he wrote to the SDS

leaders demanding that outgoing Prime Minister Klickovic be removed from political life and 

prosecuted for inflammatory comments made concerning removal of persons from the Entity 

police.22 On 13 January, SFOR soldiers from the NORDPOL Brigade (Norway, Denmark, and 

Poland) of MND-North (MND-N) confiscated a large cache of weapons and ammunition near 

Doboj after observing heavy celebratory fire over the holidays.

On 17 January, the RS National Assembly met again. The High Representative attended the 

session and found its procedures “very suspect.” 23 Nonetheless, in the early morning hours of 

the following day, the hardliners (SRS and SDS) abandoned the session, and the majority elected 

Mr. Milorad Dodik Prime Minister. Mladen Ivanic withdrew for lack of support. The assembly 

also voted to hold its next meeting in Banja Luka, site of the first two postwar RS National

Assembly sessions. The radical Assembly President, Mr. Kalinic, attempted to summon what he 

called a continuation session in Bijeljina, no doubt to try to reverse these decisions. Ambassador 

Westendorp scotched this move as unconstitutional. The next day, Kalinic postponed the 

session to swear in the new government until 31 January. On 22 January US NATO troops 

arrested a PIFWIC, Goran Jelisic, known as “Serb Adolph,” near Bijeljina.24 On 31 January the 

new Dodik government was sworn in at Banja Luka, and the assembly voted to move the seat of 

government from Pale to Banja Luka. Although the move was given immediate effect, it would 

not become a matter of law until 24 June. Kalinic would make a second attempt to steal the 

Assembly in April, calling a special session to be held in Doboj for a vote of no confidence in the 

government. The effort failed when the majority simply boycotted the session.25

SFOR, as might be expected, played a key role in facilitating the assembly sessions that 

finally installed a more moderate RS Government. COMSFOR himself counseled President 

Plavsic as she negotiated the political minefield of RS politics. SFOR forces increased troop 

presence at the assembly site. In addition, SFOR ensured safe passage of assembly members 

to assembly sessions. One concern, perhaps a red herring, expressed by some members in an 

attempt to avoid attending was fear of arrest under secret war crimes indictments, not an entirely 

unlikely risk for some. Importantly, the SFOR took steps to ensure live television coverage 

of the session, which was a constitutional requirement. There was no television coverage 

of the first session, and hardliners immediately blamed SFOR for the failure, a charge SFOR 

refuted. Nonetheless, General Shinseki made it clear to his staff that he expected a foolproof 

backup at following meetings. On the 12th hardliners attempted to adjourn the session based 

on the claim that television did not reach southeastern Republika Srpska. They failed in their 

attempt. The following day the international community challenged the assertion at the Joint 

Press Conference.26 Responsibility to ensure television coverage devolved on SFOR because it 

occupied the five television towers. This continued to be a source of frustration to Shinseki and 

a continuing point of friction with the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which seemed 

unable to organize itself for the responsibility SFOR believed it had undertaken with the order 

to occupy the towers and reform the Serb media. Because SFOR troops were in occupation, 

SFOR became responsible simply by default.

In a possibly unconnected development, three Serb PIFWCs turned themselves in to SFOR 

for transfer to the Hague, following the inauguration of a new government.27 A fourth did so in 

early March.28 Four did not exactly define a trend, but they showed that things were changing 

in the Republika Srpska. On 15 March the Brcko arbitrator deferred once more a decision on the 

final status of that key city.29 Meanwhile, in March violence broke out in Kosovo. By the end of 
169

the month, the United Nations had imposed an arms embargo against Serbia, and SFOR began 

to watch events unfold across the border of the Republika Srpska with some concern.30 NATO 

would move to the brink of war in Kosovo before the year was out and draw back only at the 

last minute.

COMSFOR continued its attempts to drive the Principals to closer and more systematic 

organization, notwithstanding that the group was in fact the instrument of the High 

Representative. Shinseki offered to staff a Principals’ secretariat, an offer declined instinctively 

by Westendorp.31 Absent collective anticipation of problems likely to arise from the annual 

decision by the Brcko arbitrator, Shinseki himself invited the Principals to attend a series of 

key leader seminars on the topic at SFOR headquarters. When this seemed likely to occur, 

the High Representative decided to hold special focused Principals meetings instead. The 

lack of systematic anticipation and planning by the agencies involved in civil implementation 

continued to be a challenge for COMSFOR, one he could address only indirectly by suasion and 

alternative means when he could find support among his fellow Principals. The departure in 

January of Ambassador Eide was a loss in this regard, as Eide had been a fellow believer in longrange thinking for the Principals. Eide was replaced by Mrs. Elizabeth Rehn from Finland.

Once elected, Prime Minister Dodik had to take the reigns of government into his hands. 

This was as daunting a task as any he faced. SFOR could go only so far in providing the suasion 

required to keep hardliners in line. One action was to post SFOR observation posts outside 

government offices in Pale so that records and equipment were not removed. These actions did 

not go beyong mere surveillance, but the message was clear. Otherwise, Dodik was left to take 

charge himself. With regard to positive reinforcement, the international community provided 

a big aid package almost immediately in response to his commitment to support the Dayton 

Accords and fight corruption in the RS government.32 COMSFOR used his influence with the 

new Prime Minister to arrange for face-to-face discussions between Dodik and the Bosniac leader 

Alija Izetbegovic. Shinseki also moved at once to try to focus Dodik’s efforts on the immediate 

requirement to restore a single government to the Serb Entity and to prepare for the fall 1998 

elections that would select a new assembly and a new president. In working closely with Dodik 

and Plavsic, however, international leaders could do only so much without compromising them 

in the eyes of their own electorate. A good bit of circumspection was required and practiced. 

With the installation of the Dodik government on 31 January, it was time for SFOR to turn 

its attention to affairs in the Federation, though significant effort would still be required in the 

north and east. Like the unified state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Federation was a legal fiction 

whose substance still had to be created from scratch. The marriage between Roman Catholic 

Croats and the Bosniac Muslims was a marriage of convenience, not affection. Indeed, the war 

in Bosnia-Herzegovina began with Croatia, as well as Serbia, trying to bite off significant parts 

of the Bosnian state of the old Yugoslavia. It closed with incidents of local combat between the 

two factions of the Federation armed forces. Except for their common distrust of their Serb 

neighbors, the Croats and Muslims of Bosnia found little cause to unite them, particularly the 

Croats, who were fated to be a significant but permanent minority in the Federation, no less than 

in the federal state. 

Croats were tied by nationality to the newly independent Croatian state. Croatia provided 

them dual citizenship and resources. The Bosnian Croats’ political goals in the Federation 

were aimed at carving out the greatest degree of autonomy they could. The task of integration 

was made more difficult by the obvious fact that any economic union with Croatia still offered 

benefits that membership in the Federation could not match. The Croatian population of 

Bosnia-Herzegovina held on to the wartime dream of union with Croatia with equal or greater 

determination than most Serbs across the Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) retained their 

dream of a greater Serbia. They fought to retain control over their ethnically dominated areas 
170

no less tenaciously. 

Among the Croat population, the hardline HDZ Party, with roots in Zagreb, enjoyed a 

near monopoly of power. Croatian President Tudjman retained great influence in Bosnian 

Croat affairs through a variety of means. A February visit to the President of Croatia by the 

High Representative, head of the OSCE, and Special Representative of the Secretary General, 

to address among other things behavior of Croat-dominated municipal governments in 

Bosnia-Herzegovina, indicates how deeply Tudjman’s influence reached into the entrails of 

the Federation.33 The Croatian leader also controlled the return to their homes of Serb refugees 

who were driven from enclaves within Croatia proper, particularly from the Krajina. This was 

a key to Bosnian resettlement efforts. In 1995, as many as 150,000 Krajina Serbs were displaced 

to northern Bosnia-Herzegovina and on into the FRY. Their presence in former Bosniac and 

Croatian homes throughout the Republika Srpska continued to be a major obstacle to refugee 

returns within the Entities. 

The strategy of the international community to create the integrated multicultural federation 

they wanted in Bosnia as a counterweight to the Republika Srpska involved progressively 

integrating the Federation armed forces, seating elected mixed municipal governments, 

dismissing officials who openly opposed the Dayton Accords, and particularly developing a 

sense of security for returnees by creating integrated municipal police forces representative of 

the ethnic balance the international community wanted to establish. That balance was nothing less 

than restoring the prewar (1991) mixed demographic patterns of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In places 

like Stolac, Mostar, and Drvar, the anchors of the postwar Croat enclave, these initiatives proved 

difficult. The Croats, with reason, believed they had won these areas in the 1995 offensives that 

led the Serbs to agree to the Dayton Accords. Many believed as well that the Croats deserved 

recognition of their holdings as a third Entity, the Dayton Accords notwithstanding. They 

were reluctant to surrender control of their border areas. Inevitably, SFOR was drawn into the 

local struggles as resistance escalated. The events at Derventa and Plehan, and those at Drvar 

discussed earlier, were the most notable examples in 1998. Derventa and Plehan were towns in 

the western RS with Croat minorities. At the same time as the killings and riot at Drvar, they too 

had their disturbances, mirror images and in all likelihood not unrelated to those in Drvar. 

The incident at Derventa occurred on 23 April 1998, the day before the riot in Drvar. In 

Derventa, northeast of Banja Luka and just south of Slavonski Brod in Croatia, the Croats were 

the displaced minority, the Serbs the local majority. Many Serbs were said to be refugees from 

Drvar. In 1998, the return of a large number of Croat refugees was anticipated from Germany 

as a result of government incentives and pressure from the various Länder.

34 In spite of warning 

from the NORDPOL brigade of MND-N, which patrolled the area, the international community 

insisted on going forward with a Croat Roman Catholic Mass on the 23rd led by the Croat 

Catholic Archbishop of Sarajevo, Cardinal Puljic. According to a report prepared for the SFOR 

Deputy Commander for Operations (DCOMOPS), the Croats scheduled the Mass for a day 

coinciding with one of the historic massacres that dominate the Bosnian calendar like religious 

holy days.35 The OHR insisted rather that it was to commemorate the anniversary of St. George, 

the patron saint of the church.36 The two explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. 

The site itself had some connection to World War II Ustasha (Croat fascists), a relationship 

exploited by Serb hardliners, who broadcast Chetnick (Serbian resistance) anthems from their 

offices to stir up the crowd.37

The visit, according to the OHR spokesman, had been planned and organized in conjunction 

with RS and municipal authorities. The Mayor of Derventa reported he had been pressured into 

permitting the Mass by threats of loss of international aid. He gave permission 2 days before 

the Drvar murders. He would not have done so after what happened, he said. The hostile 

Serb response was clearly coordinated. Serb demonstrators used truckloads of sand and tree 
171

trunks as mobile roadblocks. Only 4 of 15 Croat buses actually arrived at the site of the Mass. 

A crowd of 200 to 400 Serbs, thought to have been hired locally and brought in from Doboj, 

stoned the buses. One bus was overturned. The Cardinal, the Commander of the 4th Croat 

Corps, and 40 other Croats were trapped in the church, requiring rescue by Norwegian troops 

of the NORDPOL brigade. Notably, local police did what they could in the town itself to protect 

Croats from the hostile crowd. Some Serb police were reported to have performed their duties 

at personal risk.

The Drvar riot took place the following day, the 24th. On the 25th, another Roman Catholic 

Mass, attended by Croat refugees from Slavonski Brod in Croatia, was scheduled for the Plehan 

monastery near Derventa. The OHR had given assurances that only three buses would be 

involved (some reports say five). Some 300 Croats in six buses (some reports say seven) actually 

arrived. Serb demonstrators set up roadblocks, and the visitors turned around and went back 

to Croatia. Local Catholics, accompanied by Senior High Representative Hans Schumacher, 

conducted a symbolic Mass in Plehan without incident. The IPTF Commissioner complained in 

his report of the short timeline allowed by the international community as well as bad planning 

by the RS Police. These religious visits, of course, were political statements by the displaced 

Croats, the Serbs, and the international community. Indeed, their religious purpose was most 

likely secondary to all parties.

These three events led to a good bit of recrimination among the Principals, none more than 

events at Drvar. The High Representative expressed the view that if SFOR could not adequately 

support the international community under the existing mandate, it was time to go back to the 

NAC and revise that mandate. Deputy High Representative Jacques Paul Klein and the Special 

Representative of the Secretary General, Mrs. Rehn, were dismissive of the Canadian efforts at 

Drvar: Ambassador Klein in a fairly insulting manner in the presence of one of SFOR’s Canadian 

officers, Mrs. Rehn in a hastily drawn memorandum. Mrs. Rehn quickly apologized. Klein and 

Westendorp ultimately sent what amounted to letters of apology and appreciation once Klein’s 

remarks had spread among Canadian forces and, apparently, all the way to Ottawa.38 COMSFOR, 

who did not attend the Principal’s meeting immediately following the events of the 24th, took a 

strong position that the efforts of the Royal Canadians had been heroic in light of their mission 

and national limits on what they could and could not do to control civil disturbances. SFOR 

argued that riot control was a police function, not military. Notably, neither the Norwegians 

at Derventa nor the Canadians at Drvar (nor for that matter the Americans at Brcko in August 

1997) were armed with nonlethal weapons, precisely because their nations did not want them 

performing police functions.

It was just at that point, at the joint between police and military functions, that the question of 

mandate arose to divide the military and civil authorities, as it always had. Klein wrote Shinseki 

a measured and personal letter on 4 May explaining his apparent slight of the Canadian soldiers 

at Drvar and his personal frustration with the military command that had led to his remarks.39

It was not lack of appreciation for the performance of the Canadian soldiers that had led to his 

comments, he wrote, 

but with the way in which SFOR’s mandate is interpreted more generally. . . . I find it exasperating 

to be told again and again that this, that, or the other “is not SFOR’s job.” I have lost count of the 

number of times I have heard this phrase. And yet I do not believe that, on the basis of my reading 

of the Dayton agreement, it is justified nearly as often as it is used.40 

Klein then quoted precisely that section of Annex 1A that had widened the military charter, 

the section beginning, “Within the limits of its assigned principal tasks and available resources, 

and on request, the IFOR (now SFOR) shall have the right to . . .,” and so forth.41 Specifically, 
172

Klein used the example of a response given to Deputy High Representative Schumacher at 

Plehan that removing a sand roadblock was the job of local police, not SFOR, a complaint that 

echoed one voiced by Richard Holbrooke while watching Serb districts of Sarajevo burn in the 

early days of IFOR.42 What, then, was the difficulty? More to the point, what had happened at 

Drvar?

The problem at Drvar really had to do with accomplishing SFOR’s mission to protect and 

rescue members of the international community in cases where life or bodily harm was threatened. 

The difficulty, as covered in Chapter 1, was that SFOR was responsible for the safety of protected 

persons, generally the unarmed international workers who made civil implementation possible, 

and that this responsibility in Drvar entailed dealing with a riot of very aggressive citizens. 

As General Joulwan had pointed out to the Congress in 1997, this obligation for protecting 

persons did not extend to the use of force to protect property (with selected exceptions), a vital 

distinction. At Plehan, of course, the international community could argue there was an issue of 

freedom of movement at stake, but the argument of the primacy of responsibility belonging to 

the local police was not without merit either. The situation at Drvar, and the apparent linkage 

between the three incidents, also pointed to the great need for good human intelligence at all 

levels and more insight into the pathology of the human environment.

For Klein and observers of the actions at Drvar, the question that came to mind was why 

the Canadians had not intervened earlier before the crowd became a riot. The answer to that 

question has already been given. Aside from the surprise achieved by the Croats, policy required 

that local police be given the opportunity to fail. That policy had consequences. Klein also 

raised the larger issue of why SFOR was not more aggressive in expanding its responsibilities 

for security in general. Shinseki’s immediate reply to Klein’s broader question is not on record, 

but the explanation is fairly clear. It comes down to the qualifications imposed on the mission 

Klein quoted: “Within the limits of its assigned principal tasks and available resources . . . and 

shall have the right to. . . .” Broader intervention was not only a question of mandate (in terms 

of the authority to do), it was a question of judgment of means and the implications of taking on 

the task of ensuring security against all threats, at all levels. 

Military leaders in Bosnia believed they were provided forces capable of providing only a 

general environment of security over a broad area, with security against local and specific threats 

left largely to civil police. Some nations insisted on that interpretation. This was certainly true 

after the reductions in force that accompanied the establishment of SFOR. The military function 

was area security and action in extremis (which in fact the Canadian and Norwegian forces had 

taken) to save life or avoid serious injury to persons. Point security was the task of the civil 

authorities. Area security could be provided by a limited number of soldiers with discipline, good 

command and control, mobility, and especially reasonable warning provided by intelligence. 

Speaking to his staff, Shinseki explained metaphorically: “The rattlesnake cannot attack when 

it is stretched, it has no striking power.” Dedicated security was manpower intensive and 

inefficient. Moreover, it invited attack upon itself, as General Crouch had discovered after Gajevi 

and as the Brcko Bridge incident the following year had shown once again. The limited number 

of soldiers available to any brigade could easily be used up with static security duties, trying 

to stay ahead of their opponents’ ability to set up hasty roadblocks or conduct individual acts 

of mischief. SFOR’s strength was in its mobility, enabling it to concentrate overwhelming force 

against truly important threats, hopefully before they grew to the proportions of the incident in 

Drvar. Simply put, the 35,000 SFOR soldiers could not provide absolute blanket security in an 

area as large as Bosnia-Herzegovina. The danger, as General Clark had observed, was not in 

adding any particular new task, but in gradual piecemeal extension of the available forces. This 

was true at every level, and overreaction, prompted by hasty response to events at lower levels, 

could always produce a strategic disaster if lives were lost, whether NATO military, civilian, or 
173

Bosnian. Implicitly, Klein was not asking for point security everywhere, only that required for 

the particular problem on the particular day. Surely, in his view, enough troops could have been 

spared to protect the religious convoys on the 23rd and 25th. But military leaders since the start 

of IFOR had been determined not to become the police agents of the international community. 

A number of troop contributing nations were adamant about that, and the parallel militarypolitical command structure of the Dayton Accords was designed in great part to ensure that 

would not happen.

COMSFOR also shied away from becoming too directly or too deeply involved in the process 

of refugee return. He told Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma that this was a quagmire, that one 

had to choose one’s fights carefully and avoid the impossible task. SFOR would focus on the 

rule of law and police reform. Success in these would facilitate refugee return.43 Shinseki’s view 

was consistent with the judgment of General Klaus Naumann, the Chairman of NATO’s military 

committee and NATO’s senior officer, who had visited SFOR in March and discussed this very 

issue.44 Mr. Walter Slocombe, Deputy Secretary of Defense (Policy), also supported Shinseki’s 

position when he visited in May 1998.45 The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mr. 

Newt Gingrich, summarized the SFOR strategy succinctly when he visited. The strategy SFOR 

sought to apply, he said, called for a progressive process that went from war avoidance, to 

disturbance avoidance, to a stable local environment.46 The method was to require local police 

to do their duty or be sanctioned. The military feared setting a precedent by appearing to be 

the police force of last resort. Under Annex 1A, COMSFOR decided what commitment of forces 

was reasonable. In this, SFOR was unlikely to meet the full wishes of the agents of civilian 

implementation in all cases--certainly not after a series of incidents like those surrounding 

Drvar.

Klein acknowledged Shinseki’s frustration with the lack of coordinated planning and the 

problem of national rules of engagement, and he acknowledged SFOR’s essential contribution 

to the implementation effort. He proposed a private meeting to resolve the differences between 

the civil and military arms of the Peace Implementation Process. In May 1988, a series of visits 

were made and letters written to reassure the Canadian soldiers that their performance in Drvar 

was recognized as up to the high standard traditional in the Canadian Armed Forces.47 A letter 

from Sir Martin Garrod, the head of the High Representative’s Regional Office in Mostar, was 

among the most sincere.48 Garrod had himself been protected and supported by the Canadians 

during the riots.

 The problem of coordination among the Principals remained a problem. As already noted, 

General Shinseki had proposed creating a secretariat for the Principals meetings to try to establish 

some order in their dealings. This Ambassador Westendorp had declined, not least because he 

saw such a body as an intrusion on his prerogatives under the Dayton Accords.49 After Drvar, 

Westendorp agreed to explore setting up some sort of interagency planning group headed by 

his deputy, Donald Lamont.50 Two weeks later the DCOMOPS visited the 1st Royal Canadian 

Regiment (RCR) Battle Group. He reported that the international community in Drvar was still 

in disarray in the wake of the riot.51 

At the end of May, relations between SFOR and the OHR still reflected a certain tenseness. On 

28 May, Mr. Westendorp wrote to NATO Secretary General Solana to complain about the wording 

of the Statement on Bosnia Herzegovina issued that day by the Ministerial Meeting of the NATO 

Council in Luxembourg. Westendorp objected most strenuously to the statement’s support for 

the notion of COMSFOR coordinating UN HCR, the UN IPTF, and the OSCE. Westendorp then 

went on to say: “According to Annex 10 of the Peace Agreement and Resolution 1031/95 of the 

UN Security Council [, these entities] are only, as appropriate, coordinated and given guidance 

by the High Representative.”52 Westendorp demanded the declaration be amended to reflect his 

authoritative interpretation made under provisions of Annex 10 of the GFAP. 
174

Mr. Solana was not impressed by his countryman’s pique, replying on 3 June that “SFOR 

always has and will continue to recognise the leading role of the High Representative with 

respect to civil implementation under Annex 10 of the Peace Agreement.” But, he continued, 

“As you know from past experience, SFOR also needs to liaise directly with the various civil 

agencies involved, including the UN and OSCE. This has been essential to the success of our 

joint efforts and has in no way compromised the role of the High Representative as overall 

coordinator for civil implementation as provided for in the Dayton Peace Agreement.” 53 

On 17 July, the IPTF reported that the local government of Drvar had taken no action to bring 

those responsible for the murders, fires, or subsequent riot to book. Moreover, by that date, no 

suitable Serb policemen had been found willing to do duty in Drvar.54 After Drvar, though not 

as an immediate consequence, the NAC augmented SFOR with a paramilitary police force based 

on the Italian Carabinieri. The Canadian government allowed protective equipment, eventually 

including pepper spray, to be issued to its forces.

While matters in Drvar had heated up, SFOR was involved in the first major exercise of 

SACEUR’s reinforcement capability. The capability for reception and employment of strategic 

reserves had become more important because of SFOR’s reduced size. SFOR had an eye on 

the future. Anticipation of further reductions always seemed to be predicated on a rapid 

reinforcement capability to adjust should the circumstances demand. Finally, it was a useful 

demonstration because of the increasing threat posed by continued unrest in Serbia’s Kosovo 

province. The Dynamic Response Exercise was preceded by a series of local exercises conducted 

by each MND in turn, testing the employment of the designated SFOR operational (in-country) 

reserves. 

Strategic Reserve Force units came from six countries. They were the US 26th Marine 

Amphibious Unit, elements of a Turkish company, the Italian Battalion San Marco, 1st Battalion 

Royal Netherlands Marines, the 18th Polish Airborne Battalion, and the 26th Romanian Infantry 

Battalion--all supported by Air South. Units deployed into Bosnia by land and sea. They were 

employed in a series of regional exercises, which culminated in a public live-fire exercise at 

the Federation’s Glamoc Range. Each exercise was designed to familiarize the units with the 

terrain on which they might be called to operate, SFOR’s missions and methodologies, and 

deployment and reception plans. Another declared purpose was “delivering a clear message of 

multinational resolve to the BiH populace and leadership.”55 The exercise was a great success, 

and the final live-fire exercise, cohosted by the SACEUR and COMSFOR, was an international 

demonstration held before a large audience of diplomats and soldiers.

SFOR also continued its aggressive monitoring of the various bodies of Interior Ministry 

police (MUPs) under terms of Annex 1A in 1997. On 2 and 3 April, the Special Building Unit 

(SBU) in Pale was subjected to an intensive inspection.56 The SBU had provided security to former 

President Karadzic and certain others long after Karadzic ceased his open involvement in active 

politics. Under SFOR, the SBU forces were limited to guarding only three buildings, the UNIS 

Building, housing the Joint Institutions offices, the Hotel Panorama, where the Serb Tri-President 

had his offices, and the Hotel Olympic, residence of the RS National Assembly President. This 

limitation had brought with it a significant reduction in authorized strength. Five companies of 

MND-SE were involved in the inspection. By and large, the units examined were deemed to be 

in compliance. A few weapons were confiscated at Karadzic’s old headquarters at the FAMOS 

Factory, i.e., 10 rifles and miscellaneous ammunition. 

An even larger crackdown took place in mid May. In Pale, 15 police sites were inspected; 

five, belonging to the Police Antiterrorist Brigade and SBU, were inspected by SFOR, while 10 

sites were inspected by the IPTF. MND-SE assembled seven companies for the program, three 

to inspect and a reserve of four. The inspection was to verify whether police officers found 

outside of their appropriate domains were authorized to be where they were and that they 
175

were legitimate police, not part of a parallel organization formed or retained by hardliners.57

Implicitly, the exercise was directed to support the Dodik government in its assertion of 

authority over eastern Republika Srpska. Again, the results showed the special police generally 

in compliance with the strictures of the SFOR commander. Once again, they were reminded 

that someone was watching.58

In unrelated events, on 29 May, another Republika Srpska PIFWC, Milojica Kos, was detained 

and sent to the Hague, bringing the total number detained to 28 out of 59 publicly indicted. On 

15 June, in Foca, another was detained under a sealed indictment, a Serb schoolmaster, Milorad 

Krnojelac.59 The same day, the majority of the RS National Assembly, with some prodding 

by the High Representative, dismissed hardline Assembly President Dragon Kalinic and his 

chief deputy Nikola Poplasen.60 The issue over which they were dismissed was the High 

Representative’s demand that the vice presidency of the assembly be given to a member of the 

Muslim-led coalition. Petar Djokic, a socialist, replaced Kalinic, while Safet Bico, a Bosniac, 

replaced Poplasen. Subsequently, Kalinic became head of the SDS Party, and Poplasen would be 

elected President of the Serb Republic in succession to President Plavsic in the fall. Westendorp 

would dismiss him from that position on 5 March 1999. 

During the spring, SFOR also supported the program of the High Representative to issue 

generic national license plates and car registration documents within both Entities. The new 

plates were to ensure freedom of movement across the IEBL by making all cars’ point of origin 

indistinguishable. The push for replacement was the agreement of neighboring countries not 

to recognize the old forms. Like other initiatives, this one took a great deal of time and energy 

to implement. SFOR’s principal contribution involved dictating that wheeled military vehicles 

would all display the common license plate. 

May saw the beginning of an SFOR withdrawal from its positions securing the five television 

transmission towers. Among the first initiatives of the Dodik government was agreement to the 

High Representative’s mandate to reorganize the SRT television network.61 Dodik succeeded in 

restoring the lost equipment from the Mount Zep transmission site within weeks. Negotiations 

with SFOR for withdrawal took longer than either side wanted, largely to assure SFOR that 

proper security arrangements would replace the SFOR presence.62 In May, the NAC and 

SACEUR gave SFOR authority to depart the towers. It was not deemed important enough to 

mention at the press conference afterward. By September, SFOR occupied only one tower.63

On 20 June, Operation JOINT GUARD ended and Operation JOINT FORGE began. There 

was a new mission:

To deter hostilities and stabilize the peace contributing to a secure environment by 

providing a continued military presence in the Area of Responsibility, and 

To target and coordinate SFOR support to key areas and primary civil 

implementation organizations; and progress towards a lasting consolidation of 

the peace, without further need for NATO-led Forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina.64

Business in SFOR proceeded without much impact, although the staff organization changed 

from a combined joint staff organization to an assistant chief of staff structure. This permitted 

reducing the grades of the staff principals while retaining general officer representation of 

NATO Contact Group members, Germany (as chief of staff), France (assistant chief of staff, 

support), US (assistant chief of staff, military operations--Major General J. B. Burns, later Major 

General John Sylvester), and Italy (assistant chief of staff for civil operations). It also provided 

higher visibility for civil operations.

On 21 July, demonstrations in Banja Luka prevented the burial of the greatly respected Mufti 

of that city on the site of his ruined mosque. On 23 July, the British seized two suspected PIFWCs 
176

in Prijador, an event loudly trumpeted by their government, only to find they had arrested the 

wrong two men. SFOR pointed out that such accidents would occur when the responsible 

Entity officials did not live up to their responsibilities to turn over suspected war criminals.

In August, the Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU), a paramilitary police force, arrived 

in Sarajevo. It was a four-company (three line companies, one specialist company) battalion 

of Italian Carabinieri, soon to be reinforced with an Argentine gendarmerie company. Its 

mission was to fill “the public security gap between the local police and SFOR . . . for which 

combat troops are unsuited and untrained.”65 The MSU underwent a period of training and 

certification, following which it began to familiarize itself with the area of responsibility (AOR) 

and the mission of SFOR. Its first use in crowd control did not occur until 1 October when it 

dispersed a crowd blocking a main road south of Mostar. The crowd’s intention was to prevent 

Bosniac displaced persons from returning to their homes, and the MSU acted to preserve 

freedom of movement. The international community took a public position that all had gone 

according to plan. Mrs. Rehn complained privately that the MSU action had preempted the 

local police, who had finally decided to act after much prodding from the IPTF.66 The Special 

Representative had been somewhat nervous about integrating the MSU and the IPTF for some 

time. First of all, she was concerned that MSU uniforms, which were black, would be mistaken 

for the dark blue of the IPTF. This was a difficulty since members of the IPTF were unarmed and 

generally acted only as observers while the MSU was both armed and active. There was also the 

question of who was in charge, the military or the IPTF on the scene.67 SFOR’s position was that 

the MSU was a military formation, but that coordination would be accomplished appropriate to 

the circumstances.

The conflict in Kosovo grew in intensity as the year went on. SFOR responded by increasing 

its attention to the borders with Serbia and Montenegro as well as heightening its sensitivity to 

other possible implications of increased tension in Bosnia as NATO squared off with the Serb 

mother country. In public affairs statements, a distinction was drawn between NATO actions 

in Bosnia and NATO actions elsewhere. Somewhat remarkably, both SFOR and Bosnian Serb 

politicians judged this distinction useful. It was a distinction backed up by the international 

community when it seemed to be challenged, whether by Federation or RS figures.68 In late 

September 1998, a discrepancy with the count of SA-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles held 

by the Vojska Republika Srpska (VRS--RS Army) led SFOR to sequester key weapon components, 

batteries, and trigger mechanisms, under SFOR control.69 The matter was perceived to be a 

failure in accounting rather than deviant behavior.70 The disciplinary action appeared to be a 

move to keep honest men honest rather than to punish misbehavior. On 13 October, as affairs 

seemed to verge on war in Kosovo, some American employees of the OSCE were evacuated 

from the Republika Srpska on US Department of State orders.

Elections were held in Bosnia on 12 and 13 September. The Bosnian Tripartite Presidency, 

lower house, the Entity lower houses, various municipal governments in both Entities, the 

Federation Cantons, and the RS Presidency were all being contested. For the international 

community, the elections were the strategic event of the year. OSCE still had the lead for 

conducting elections. SFOR support was not as extensive in 1998 as in the previous years. 

SFOR still provided support in security, logistics, communications, conduct of the information 

campaign, and engineering. During the elections, SFOR’s responsibilities for evacuating 

international civilian workers increased markedly. Around 2,500 election monitors arrived in 

Bosnia and were spread throughout the country. In contrast to 1997, Entity police were given 

responsibility for security and ballot escort duties under the supervision of the IPTF. SFOR 

acted generally as a backup force. Because Bosnia seemed more secure generally, and because 

of the presence of the MSU, it was not deemed necessary to bring in temporary reinforcements 

on the scale of 1997. SFOR did have to be prepared to assume escort and security duties if the 
177

civil police were not up to the task.71

SFOR developed a plan, called Operation Plan ACROPOLIS after the sacred Athenian 

hilltop fortress, to coordinate SFOR requirements. The principal contribution was providing a 

national election command and control network. SFOR set up an Integrated Combined Elections 

Operations Section within the headquarters and supported a network of civil-military Election 

Response Groups (ERGs) at SFOR and MND levels to collocate civil and military response nodes. 

At the national level, the ERG contained representatives of all the chief interested international 

agencies. They were prepared to track events and respond to any crisis or need for guidance 

that might occur. On 8 September, SFOR conducted a command post exercise to rehearse both 

the OSCE and military communications and staff systems in preparation for the election on 

12 and 13 September. For the most part, the election itself passed without incident. Nearly 70 

percent of the eligible voters participated.

The various logistic and security functions drew SFOR’s main attention for the duration of 

the election. This led to a minor incident within the international community when the ICTY 

complained publicly about the withdrawal of site security from an ongoing excavation of 

suspected mass graves.72 Warning of this withdrawal had been provided earlier, but the ICTY 

had not chosen to change its schedule of activities or secure alternative means of security. They 

now elected to complain of ill treatment. This was indicative of the general attitude of the ICTY 

regarding SFOR support, which the Chief Prosecutor, Canadian Judge Louise Arbour, seems 

to have regarded as generally inadequate. Mrs. Arbour was a force to be reckoned with. Over 

time, she showed a marked willingness to express her dissatisfaction directly to the highest 

levels of alliance and national government and to go over the heads of government, through 

the press, whenever she believed the tribunal’s needs were not receiving proper attention. This 

contrasted with the general agreement within the international community inside Bosnia to 

present a public face of cooperation whatever disagreements there might be in private. In this 

case, support of the elections seems to have taken priority, and gravesite security was suspended 

to permit SFOR to focus on its primary mission. 

Election results were announced on 28 September at the Principals Meeting. The governing 

coalition of the Republika Srpska retained 43 of 83 seats in the Assembly, though President Plavsic 

was defeated for reelection by Nikola Poplasen of the SRS. Federation Defense Minister Ante 

Jelavic replaced Croat Tri-President Zubac, and moderate Sivko Radisic replaced Tri-President 

Krajisnik. None of the most nationalist parties retained an absolute majority in the Entity 

assemblies. Alija Izetbegovic remained the Bosniac Tri-President.73

In the late spring of 1998, as the affair at Drvar calmed down to pre-riot conditions, the 

SFOR command journals indicate another threshold had been passed. The nature of the 

implementation problem had transformed itself again as it had after the November elections 

in the Republika Srpska in 1997. It is notable in these months that General Shinseki’s recorded 

comments often indicate a desire to find a more-or-less hard target, like the police structure in 

Banja Luka in September 1997, to which he frequently refers. He viewed such a target as subject 

to clean, swift, and decisive exemplary military action. It is equally clear he never found such 

a target. Instead, references to the root of problems residing in post-Communist corporations, 

more like Mafia families than Fortune 500 enterprises, start to spring up: the Renner Company 

in Stolac, Finvest in Drvar, and Centrex in the Republika Srpska. These were organizations 

created during the collapse of the communist economy under pressure of the wartime need for 

rapid creation of sources of revenue to sustain the war effort without too much consideration for 

ethical or legal niceties. Generally, their tentacles reached beyond the immediate locale and into 

interested neighboring sponsor states in a web of influence, power, and corruption. Often, their 

directors included prominent political figures. They combined criminal, political, and economic 

power around a nexus of money. There seemed to be no part of the government into which they 
178

did not reach. 

Military bodies proved largely unsuited for dealing with criminal organizations, in contrast 

to controlling Entity police, media, and militaries, whose structures made them subject to control 

by force majeure. Dealing with criminal organizations required reformed police, an effective 

and professional judiciary, and a functioning penal system. These the High Representative set 

about creating, with SFOR providing assistance and expertise where it could, principally with 

legal expertise and information-processing skills.

There was one area in which COMSFOR could deal directly with the criminal networks, 

however. That was to cut the connection between the faction militaries and these external 

bodies, all in the name of professionalization. Professionalization was not a new notion. When 

the separation of forces was accomplished, SFOR had assumed a tutorial role in dealing with 

the faction armies almost immediately. At the outset, this may have been no more than a 

rationalization for exacting enforcement of various minute restrictions in a way to make the 

faction armies more palatable to the professional soldiers who controlled them. Eventually, 

the notion that leaving a professional military force behind would contribute to overall stability 

clearly had taken hold. 

Professionalization was one of General Shinseki’s principal declared strategic goals. In 

June, he went to Oberammergau to address an officers’ course of mixed faction officers. He 

explained SFOR’s mandate, but his primary purpose was to call on his audience to become 

more professional in the Western sense of becoming an apolitical military. The characteristics of 

such a force, he said, were that it was well-trained, ready, and disciplined by values of integrity, 

ethics, and honorable conduct. A professional military was an apolitical force that could be 

relied on to support elected leaders regardless of personal ideologies, a force that supported the 

rule of law. Professionalism, mutually recognized, could lead to mutual trust and confidence 

building between the Entities and to cooperation by faction armies in national efforts such as 

civil works, disaster relief, and support of critical domestic needs. Shinseki finished with the 

example of General George Washington, who was determined to serve the cause of democracy 

for which he had fought, and thus refused political power at Newburgh.74

Now those notions of inculcating military professionalism, heretofore limited to leading 

and encouraging, took on a new and more practical form. As he departed the theater, General 

Shinseki asserted a new authority for the COMSFOR, the right to veto faction general officer 

appointments and to impose a system of ethical vetting for aspirant generals.75 First, it was a 

means to cut the cords connecting the Bosnian Croat factional army to the Croation national 

army. Then it was judged necessary to deny newly elected RS President Nikola Poplasen the 

ability to politicize the VRS by the power of appointment. 

The authority of the SFOR commander to remove faction military commanders for 

noncompliance with the provisions of the Dayton Accords was clear. Previous SFOR 

commanders had done so, and indeed ordered the sanctioning of faction army units that 

committed gross acts of noncompliance. Such sanctions required serious provocation, however, 

so that COMSFOR could retain the appearance of evenhandedness and consistency. Moreover, 

there was always uncertainty as to whether the replacement would be any better or that the 

soldiers sanctioned would simply turn to criminal pursuits. In the summer of 1998, a serious 

incident arose that provided COMSFOR the opportunity both to begin to break the criminal and 

political nexus that infected the Hrvatsko vijece Odbrane (HVO--The Croatian Defense Council or 

Croat faction Army, now part of the Federation armed forces) and to break the connection that 

ran from certain Bosnian Croat officers to officials in Croatia. The particular case involved a 

General Sopta, commander of the 1st Guard Corps of the HVO.

76 General Sopta was a hard case. 

He was generally uncooperative with Major General Pierre Lang, the French commander of 

MND-SE, in whose territory he was based. He was closely connected with political activities in 
179

the Croatian community through ties to the HDZ, the Croation nationalist party that operated in 

Bosnia as well as Croatia, and Shinseki had reliable reports that Sopta was involved in criminal 

activities in the Croat dominated areas of the Federation.

The Sopta matter came to a head on 15 August when, having been explicitly denied permission 

to do so by General Lang, Sopta sent HVO soldiers across the international border into Croatia, 

allegedly to fight forest fires. As a result of this disobedience, General Lang imposed a training 

and movement ban on the unit involved and denied it participation in training scheduled under 

the US-sponsored Train and Equip Program. COMSFOR directed that Sopta be removed from 

command, first by direction to Colonel General Zivko Budimir, the Croat Deputy Commander, 

Federation Armed Forces Joint Headquarters, and second to Ante Jelavic, the Federation 

Defense Minister. Then he wrote to the Federation [Croat] Tri-President, Kresimir Zubac.77 The 

immediate response from the Croats was a claim by the Defense Minister that he had given 

the order directing Sopta to cross the border. Jelavic requested the general’s continued tenure 

in command. Sopta was suspended rather than relieved. General Sopta was sent into Croatia, 

temporarily beyond the reach of SFOR, to attend a senior officer’s course with the Croatian 

Army. Sopta was then to be made an officer in the Croat Army, the HV, though that move was 

apparently blocked by intervention by the SACEUR with President Tudjman. The Sopta matter 

became intertwined with the case of a Brigadier General Ilija Rasic, commander of the Croat 4th 

Division, who was simultaneously a member of the Derventa Council.78 Disposition of these 

two cases was carried over beyond General Shinseki’s term of command. They were resolved 

only after General Montgomery Meigs, Shinseki’s successor, was forced into a major battle of 

wills over ultimate control of faction armed forces general officer promotions and assignments, 

regardless of whether misbehavior was an issue. Notably, Meigs restored Rasic to duty after 

Rasic resigned his political position.79 Sopta became a civilian.

All this military dealing was conducted as a subtheme in an election campaign in which 

Defense Minister Jelavic opposed Tri-President Zubak in the race for Croat Tri-President. Zubac 

had bolted Tudjman’s Croatia-based HDZ in June and formed his own Bosnia-based party. 

Zubac would prove to be no Plavsic, and Jelavic, whom Shinseki thought was weakened by the 

Sopta affair, would succeed Zubac. The Sopta mess, with its twists and turns and resistance to 

clean solution, indicated a need to think in new ways about separating the leaderships of the 

faction armies from the various strands of political and criminal influence complicating the rule 

of law in Bosnia. The elections also spawned difficulties in the Republika Srpska.

In the other Entity, Prime Minister Dodik and President Plavsic had stepped up their efforts 

to take control in the eastern Republika Srpska as the September elections approached. They took 

over the hardline opposition radio stations, using Entity law on the media as their warrant.80

A pair of bombings, apparently in a small civil war over control of the RS police, raised the 

political temperature. On 9 July in Bijeljina, two men were killed attempting to plant a bomb in 

the car of one Ljubisa Savic (known as “Mauzer”), the chief of uniformed police of the Ministry 

of the Interior.81 On 8 August Srdjan Knezevic, the Deputy Chief of the Public Security Bureau, 

was murdered in Pale. The official placed in charge of the investigation of Knezevic’s murder 

was none other than Ljubisa Savic, who was permitted to employ a number of Special Police 

(who remained under SFOR control) from the western Republika Srpska in his investigation. 

Unfortunately, the Special Police had not yet been transformed into good democratic law 

enforcement officials. They arrested 14 suspects. Six additional suspects were subsequently 

found chained in the FAMOS Factory where they had been held and subjected to severe 

maltreatment. The IPTF was forced to denounce the investigation following the election, and 

Savic was dismissed.82 Savic was found murdered in his car in Bijeljina in June 2000.83 As part 

of the earlier affair, Dodik’s interior minister disbanded the Pale SBU, long a thorn in the side of 

the international community. 
180

All these efforts were not enough. As already indicated, President Plavsic lost the election in 

September to Nikola Poplasen, candidate of the SRS, who had run, in spite of the requirement 

to support the Dayton Accords, on a platform seeking unification of all the Serb Peoples in 

a political arrangement outside of Dayton.84 Now the international community had another 

problem, restraining Poplasen from politicizing the army of the Republika Srpska by dismissing 

generals who had served Plavsic and Dodik and replacing them with hardliners loyal to 

him. This was a problem because the Republika Srpska Constitution made the Entity President 

commander-in-chief of the army, a position the international community had supported in 

the case of President Plavsic. The Federation Constitution, as it happened, gave the roles of 

commander-in-chief to the respective faction members of the Tri-Presidency. Dayton took the 

somewhat anomalous position of vesting national command authority in the three-member 

Presidency while apparently reserving the defense function proper to the Entities.85

On 12 October General Shinseki replied to a letter from the High Representative. He thanked 

him for the opportunity to comment on a proposed “decision” by the High Representative, 

drafted by the SFOR and OHR legal staffs, that addressed the constitutional conundrum.86

Apparently, the High Representative’s letter touched only on the issue of civilian command 

authority and limited its interest there to a single aspect, personnel actions, which logically 

would have been Westendorp’s chief concern. Shinseki proposed pausing for the time being 

and expanding the action to make it a more comprehensive package. For now, COMSFOR, 

relying on his Annex 1A authorities, would simply tell the new putative faction commandersin-chief--Poplasen of the Republika Srpska and Jelavic of the Croat portion of the Federation--

that his approval henceforth would be required on all general officer changes. To make the 

case even stronger, Shinseki obtained the signature of the High Representative on a letter 

announcing this policy, which he presented to the Entity officials on 21 October 1998.87 The 

letter also made public the High Representative’s intention to resolve finally the constitutional 

question of civilian command. The following day, Shinseki turned over his command to General 

Montgomery Meigs. It would be left to General Meigs to put flesh on the bones of the evolving 

concept of professionalization.

General Eric Shinseki enjoyed the longest tenure in command of the NATO military force 

in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He took command in July 1997 and turned it over 15 months later 

under circumstances far different than those he had found when he arrived. Two days before 

departing, Shinseki gave a valedictory presentation to the North Atlantic Council.88 He reminded 

his audience of those tense days in 1997 when civil war threatened both the Republika Srpska and 

international peace efforts as President Plavsic struggled with her Pale opponents. Challenges 

still remained for his successor, he said. The Republika Srpska had a new hardline president and 

an assembly controlled (however tenuously) by moderates. Tensions with the Bosnian-Croat 

leadership were bound to grow over returns, and SFOR efforts to “depoliticize” the leadership 

of the faction armies would produce its own stresses. Helping to implement the rule of law, 

assisting returns, and helping revive the economy remained SFOR tasks. “In the absence of an 

effective police and judiciary system, the international community will continue to default to 

SFOR to provide a safe and secure environment,” he said. The conflict in Kosovo threatened to 

spill over into Bosnia, reminding the international actors that Bosnia was a regional, not a local, 

problem. Finally, the conflict over Brcko remained deeply divisive, and yet another arbitration 

decision hovered on the horizon.

The vision Shinseki offered his successor emphasized three points: professionalization, 

enhancing the rule of law, and achieving better civil-military coordination. SFOR continued to 

perform its core duties, monitoring compliance with the Dayton Accords, deterring renewed 
181

hostilities, and providing a safe environment. 

What SFOR can contribute directly to a self-sustained peace are professional armed forces that 

pose no threat to the civil institutions or the citizens they defend. We have the opportunity to 

foster, train, and encourage development of a professional ethos in the Entity Armed Forces that 

will provide a solid foundation for a peace independent of SFOR presence.89

Shinseki then went on to acknowledge that SFOR had a role beyond the narrowly military. 

SFOR’s soldiers and units were also charged with supporting civil implementation tasks. Here, 

working with the international community, he believed SFOR could contribute to the creation of 

“the institutional and professional commitment to rule of law that will stand as a bastion against 

hatred.” The High Representative, he reminded his listeners, had referred to the Rule of Law as 

“the sine qua non for self-sustaining peace.”90 And, until the rule of law was firmly embedded, 

SFOR would have to continue to perform all those nontraditional military tasks required to 

provide a safe and secure environment. Only when a secure environment could be ensured 

would it be possible to reduce the force significantly. 

He concluded by returning to the need he had long espoused for the international community 

to better harmonize its efforts both for reasons of efficiency and effect. To this end, he supported 

the High Representative’s initiative to develop an effective Strategic Coordination Group “to 

assist the Principals in developing and reviewing priorities, setting objectives, identifying 

resource requirements, synchronizing and coordinating efforts across objective areas, and 

identifying risk.”

Conditions, as Shinseki indicated, were dramatically different. Elections were the strategic 

events of the year in Bosnia. During his tenure, there had been two successful election cycles, 

in 1997 and 1998, though the results left something to be desired. The international community 

had to invest a great deal of energy and effort to ensure the elections were conducted reasonably 

close to Western democratic standards. Still, the optimist could point to a more open political 

environment, at least in the Republika Srpska, even if there was yet no emerging crop of would-be 

Jeffersonians. Nonetheless, the democratic process had not yet become self-sustaining by any 

means, and the international effort looked more like a protectorate all the time. For the most 

part, the faction armies appeared to be under control of their leadership and to have no intention 

of restarting the war. The real measure of success in that regard would be discovered in the 

following spring when the Serb motherland came under attack by NATO forces over the issue of 

Kosovo. The fact that SFOR could turn increasingly to issues of professionalization and strong 

support of efforts to undermine criminal combinations is a measure of how successful SFOR had 

become in controlling the faction armed forces, whose excesses had been the principal reason 

SFOR had been deployed to Bosnia in the first place. The friction that clearly existed throughout 

General Shinseki’s tenure over expansion of SFOR engagement into constabulary duties at the 

call of the international community was a measure of this broad general success and a reflection 

of the differences among civilian policymakers in NATO and the US government, a split 

further reflected by the differing agendas of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. 

Curiously, at least institutionally, General Clark aligned himself with the more activist Secretary 

of State, which allowed civilian leaders in Sarajevo like Jacques Klein to work around the 

COMSFOR, whose approach was more in tune with his own Defense leadership. Personalities 

and jealousy over prerogatives ultimately compounded the difficulties these divisions raised. 

The COMSFOR had to pick his way among a variety of pressures according to his own view of 

his responsibilities. It is admirable that when he felt obliged to object, as he did in the case of the 

television towers, or even to criticize the trend of policy, as he did in his Armor School remarks, 

General Shinseki tended to think in ethical terms, i.e., in terms of what was right and what was 
182

wrong. That was never an easy task, and as the purely military mission faded it only became 

more difficult. General Shinseki used this quotation by the Roman general Lucius Aemilius 

Paulus to reflect his vexations in selecting the path of wisdom among the many voices who 

counseled him:

Commanders should be counseled, chiefly, by persons of known talent; by those . . . whose 

knowledge is gained from experience; by those who are present at the scene of action, who see 

the country, who see the enemy; who see the advantages that occasions offer and who, like 

people embarked in the same ship, are sharers of the dangers. If, therefore, anyone thinks himself 

qualified to give advice respecting the war which I am to conduct . . . let him come with me into 

Macedonia.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 7

1. Montenegro was the junior partner in the Federation of Yugoslavia. In January there was a rocky transition of 

power between President Djukanovic and his predecessor, President Bulatovic. Djukanovic represented a reformist 

movement not necessarily in sympathy with the Milosevic administration. There was potential, unrealized in the 

event, for a violent takeover that could well have bled over into Bosnian affairs. Kosovo, of course, needs no 

elaboration in light of the war that did break out subsequently in that province.

2. Minority returns are those where displaced persons return to areas in which their group will constitute a 

minority. Majority returns, which were more successful, referred to the return of displaced persons to areas in 

which their group constituted a majority.

3. For a discussion of the Sarajevo Declaration, see Office of the High Representative, OHR Press Release, 

Background: Sarajevo Declaration, Sarajevo, 27 July 1998. http://www.ohr.int/press/p980727a.htm.

4. Office of the High Representative, Document, Report of the High Representative for Implementation of the Peace 

Agreement to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 14 July 1998. http://www.ohr.int/reports/r980714a.htm.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., para. 8.

7. This had not been the intention of the first High Representative, Mr. Carl Bildt, who invented the position. 

The US was unalterably opposed to an “empowered” High Representative and sought every way possible to dilute 

his authority. In the end, Bonn gave to Bildt’s successor the authority Bildt had envisioned but never received. See 

various discussions in Bildt, Peace Journey.

8. HQ SFOR, Office of the Political Advisor, Memorandum [Subject] SFOR and the future of NATO, dated 

1999, signed by Luis de Almeida Sampaio. According to Mr. Richard Dotson, the US POLAD at the time, the paper 

was a joint product by all four POLADS, for which he (Dotson) was the notetaker and compiler. It is not known if 

the term “double dependency syndrome” was original with the authors. The memorandum is to be found in HQ 

SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COMLOG-1999, Mar.

9. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Script to accompany Briefing, Full Spectrum Leadership for Full 

Spectrum Operations [undated Spring 1998]. Briefing provided to author by LTC “Rocky” Gay, CG’s speechwriter.

10. During the UNPROFOR days the requirement for military men to seek UN approval for use of force was 

called a “dual key” system. Its failure to prevent Serb outrages gave it a bad reputation, and authors of the Dayton 

Accords sought to avoid this situation with the robust provisions of Section 1A. What they actually did, of course, 

was simply reverse the dual key. Under IFOR/SFOR the civil administrators had to depend on the permission of 

the military alliance, NATO and SFOR, to use force. See Holbrooke, To End A War, 72.
183

11. Office of the High Representative, Document, Bonn Peace Implementation Conference 1997, Bosnia and 

Herzegovina 1998: Self-sustaining Structures: Conclusions, Bonn, 10 December 1997, “Summary of Conclusions, para. 

13.

12. General Clark would object to the notion of an SFOR, as opposed to a SHAPE, strategy for Bosnia. 

Nonetheless, there is no question that General Shinseki had one and, in light of both the provisions of the GFAP 

and the circumstances in which he found himself, he clearly required one.

13. Comment by General Burns to the author.

14. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing titled Mandate, Mission, Tasks, Organizations. 

Identified and explained to the author by MG J. B. Burns. Briefing was written for MG Burns in CJ3 Section of 

SFOR Staff.

15. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing, The Way Ahead: CJCS Update, 6 Dec 97.

16. Memorandum TO: COMSFOR, FROM: COMMANDER’S INITIATIVES GROUP, SUBJECT: EXSUM FOR 

VISIT OF General Wesley K. Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, 12 December 1997, drafted by Major 

Vincent Alonso, Special Assistant, COMSFOR, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

SFOR, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, December 1997.

17. Clark: “As long as we support the GFAP within our capabilities we are not engaged in ‘mission creep’.“ 

Ibid.

18. The General Framework Agreement, Annex 3, Elections, Article 4, “Eligibility,” para. 1, Voters.

19. Holbrooke, To End A War, 309.

20. Office of the High Representative, Document, Report of the High Representative for Implementation of the 

Bosnian Peace Agreement to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 16 January 1998, para. 45. http://www.ohr.int/

reports/r980116a.htm.

21. General Accounting Office, Bosnia Peace Operation: Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International 

Involvement Increased. GAO/NSID-98-138, chapter 3, 64-65.

22. Comments by Simon Haselock (OHR), HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 16 January 1998, 1100 

hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

23. HR’s letter to Kalinic read by Duncan Bullivant, OHR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 23 

January 1998, 1140 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

24. Ibid.

25. General Accounting Office, Bosnia Peace Operation: Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International 

Involvement Increased. GAO/NSID-98-138, chapter 3, 67.

26. See comments by Aisling Byrne, OHR and MAJ Clarke, SFOR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 

14 January 1998, 1130 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. 

27. General Accounting Office, Bosnia Peace Operation: Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International 

Involvement Increased. GAO/NSID-98-138, chapter 3, 67.

28. On 14 and 24 February. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference 16 February June 1998, 1130 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo and HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 24 

February 1998, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

29. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Garneau, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 5 March 1998, 1130 
184

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

30. Office of the High Representative, Document, Brcko Arbitral Tribunal for Dispute Over the Inter-Entity Boundary 

in Brcko Area; Supplemental Award, 15 March 1998. Available on line at http://www.ohr.int/docu/ d980315b.htm.

31. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Garneau, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 3 March 1998, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

32. Letter from Commander SFOR to Ambassador Westendorp, SUBJECT: Joint Secretariat/Planning Cell of 

the Principals’ Group, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, March 

1998. Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative in Bosnia-Herezgovina, to General Eric Shinseki, dated 

1 April 1998, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, 

April 1998.

33. General Accounting Office, Bosnia Peace Operation: Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International 

Involvement Increased. GAO/NSID-98-138, chapter 3, 67-68.

34. Comments by Duncan Bullivant (OHR), HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 24 February 1998, 

1130 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. Comments by Duncan Bullivant (OHR), 

HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 25 February 1998, 1130 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito 

Barracks, Sarajevo.

35. Data on Derventa and events of the 23rd and 25th comes from HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives 

Group, Special Topic Notebook, COMSFOR VISIT TO DOBOJ AND DERVENTA VISIT BOOK, 14 May 1998. 

Included is a Memorandum from the Deputy Commander for Operations, dated 7 May 1998, Subject: DCOMOPS 

VISIT TO NORDPOL BDE HQ AND NORWEGIAN BN IN DERVENTA 4 May 98, signed by A. G. Dawson, 

CPT UKA, ADC to DCOMOPS. Also used are draft reports prepared for transmission to the SACEUR by the 

Commander’s Initiatives Group and retained in the Commander’s Journals. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, April and May 1998.

36. Memorandum, SUBJECT: DCOMOPS VISIT TO NORDPOL BDE HQ AND NORWEGIAN BN IN 

DERVENA 04 May 98.

37. Comments by Simon Haselock (OHR), HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 24 April 1998, 1130 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

38. Memorandum, SUBJECT: DCOMOPS VISIT TO NORDPOL BDE HQ AND NORWEGIAN BN IN 

DERVENA 04 May 98

39. One of the letters dispatched by General Shinseki at this time was to Major General Maurice Baril, Chief 

of the Defense Staff, Ottawa. It begins with the words: “I wanted to personally ensure you that I am proud 

and confident of the Canadian troops who are part of the SFOR team.” Letter, dated 5 May 1998, from General 

Eric Shinseki, Commander, SFOR, to General Maurice Baril, Chief of the Defense Staff, Ottawa, Ontario, in HQ 

USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

40. Letter from Jacques Paul Klein dated May 4, 1998 in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, 

Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

41. Ibid., p. 2.

42. He quoted General Framework Agreement, Annex 1A, Article VI, para. 3.

43. Holbrooke, To End A War, 336. See Admiral Smith’s response in Public Broadcasting System, Frontline, 

Give War a Chance, Interviews with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Leighton W. “Snuffy” Smith, Jr. 

(ret). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/guys/smith.html and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline 

/shows/ military/guys/holbrooke.html.
185

44. Memorandum, SUBJECT: Notes from the Office Call with Senator Don Nickles (R) OK, 29 May 1998, in HQ, 

USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

45. When General Klaus Naumann visited SFOR in March, he discussed this point with the SFOR Staff. He 

asked how SFOR could support refugees without becoming a police force; how SFOR could support the police. 

The CIMIC (Civil Military Integration Command) Task Force Commander (BG Gibson) replied that was the central 

point in this discussion. General Shinseki said he did not have the answer. “Using the example of implementing the 

results of the municipal elections, our success was based on starting with the easy municipalities first; reserving the 

most difficult ones for later. Thus everyone is forced to begin dealing with the problem and learn from mistakes.” 

General Naumann concurred, stating that to react to police matters hampers our ability to do our mission; puts our 

maneuver in a quagmire. Comments lifted from Draft MEMORANDUM TO SACEUR, SUBJECT: EXSUM for Visit 

of General Naumann, Chairman of the Military Committee (CMC), NATO, 02-03 March 1998, prepared by MAJ 

Alonso, Commander’s Initiatives Group. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization 

Force Commander’s Journal, March 1998.

46. MEMO TO: SACEUR, FROM: COMSFOR, [SUBJECT:] EXSUM for Visit of Undersecretary of Defense 

(Policy) Mr. Walter B. Slocombe, 18 May 1998 in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

47. Memorandum, SUBJECT: Notes from the CODEL Gingrich Visit to HQ, SFOR, 31 May 1998, prepared by 

MAJ (USA) Cornell-d’ Echert, in HQ, USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force 

Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

48. Copies of various letters dealing with this subject are in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, 

Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

49. Letter from Sir Martin Garrod, Regional Deputy to the High Representative for Mostar, to Lieutenant 

General Sir Hew Pike, DCOMOPS SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, 

COM LOG-1998, May.

50. Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, to General Shinseki, COMSFOR, dated 1 April 1998, 

in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, March 1998 

(located with Shinseki’s letter of 24 March).

51. Letter from Carlos Westendorp to General Shinseki, Ms. Elizabeth Rehn, Commissioner Richard Monk, 

Mr. Robert Berry, Mr. Nicholas Morris, Mr. Peter Streams, dated 6 May 1998 in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, May 1998.

52. Office of the Deputy Commander for Operations, HQ SFOR, MEMORANDUM, dated 17 May 98, [SUBJECT:] 

DCOMOPS VISIT TO THE RIBNIK VALLEY WITH 1RCR 17 MAY 98. In HQ, USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives 

Group, Special Topic Notebook, De-Mining, Drvar and Derventa.

53. Office of the High Representative, Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, to H. E. Javier 

Solana, Secretary General NATO, dated May 28, 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative 

Office, Notebook, COM LOG-1998, May.

54. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Office of the Secretary General, Letter from Javier Solana, Secretary 

General, to His Excellency Ambassador Carlos Westendorp, The High Representative, dated 3 June 1998, in HQ 

SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, June. 

55. Comments by Alexander Ivanko, UNMIBH, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 17 July 1998, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

56. SFOR applied its principle of transparency to Exercise Dynamic Resolve too. SFOR published an extensive 

press package for Dynamic Response, Peace Stabilisation Force, Operation Joint Guard Exercise Dynamic Response 

98. http://www.nato.int/sfor/dyn-resp/dyn-resp.htm. COMSFOR’s briefing packet is in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, March 1998. Quotation is from COMSFOR’s 
186

briefing slide for Opening Remarks, Dynamic Response “Rock Drill,” 20 March 1998.

57. See HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference (s), 2, 3 and 6 April 1998, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press 

Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

58. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 14 May 1998, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, 

Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

59. Shinseki discussed his purposes in a meeting with congressional delegates on 4 April. See [Memorandum], 

SUBJECT: MINUTES OF THE US CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION MEETING 4 APRIL 98 AT THE 

HEADQUARTERS OF COMSFOR IN ILIDZA in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, April 1998.

60. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference 16 June 1998, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito 

Barracks, Sarajevo.

61. Ibid.

62. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Garneau, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 16 February 1998, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

63. Comments of Maj. Clarke, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 24 February 1998, 

1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. A copy of the MEMORANDUM OF 

UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE STABILISATION FORCE AND THE REPUBLIKA SRPSKA CONCERNING 

TRANSFER, CONTROL, AND SECURITY OF SRPSKA RADIO TELEVISION TRANSMISSION TOWERS, is in HQ 

SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG-1999, Apr.

64. General Accounting Office, Bosnia Peace Operation: Mission, Structure, and Transition Strategy of NATO’s 

Stabilization Force, Letter Report, GAO/NSIAD-99-19, Letter: 3.1.

65. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing, Full Dimensional Peace Operations, slide, Peace 

Operations Integration, COMSFOR Mission, dated 5 Sep 98. Briefing provided to author by LTC Mike Drumm, 

CG’s Initiatives Group.

66. Taken from MSU Commander COL Leso’s public briefing on the MSU. HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, 

Administrative Office, Files, miscellaneous briefings.

67. Minutes of Principals Meeting, 1 October 1998, prepared by Philippe Morel, LTC French Army, Special 

Assistant to COMSFOR in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force 

Commander’s Journal, October 1998. Comments by Ariane Quentier, UNHCR, Kelly Moore, UNMIBH, and Maj. 

Richard Saint-Louis, SFOR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 2 October 1998, 1142 Hours, Coalition Press 

Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. 

68. This last was still a live issue when General Meigs arrived. See Letter from Elizabeth Rehn, Special 

Representative of the Secretary General to General Montgomery Meigs, COMSFOR, dated 26 October 1998 in HQ 

USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, October 1998.

69. See comments by Simon Haselock, OHR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 26 June 1998, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo, and Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR in HQ 

SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 6 and 13 October 1998, 1130 and 1138 Hours, Coalition Press Information 

Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. See Office of the High Representative, OHR Press Statement, Message from the High 

Representative Regarding Recent Inflammatory Statements by Individuals Holding Public Office, Sarajevo, 9 October 1998. 

http://www.ohr.int/press/p981009a.htm.

70. Correspondence in Office of the Commander, SFOR, Notebook, COM LOG 1998-October. See especially, 

Letter from General Eric Shinseki to Lieutenant General Momir Talic, dated 12 October 1998 (mailed the 13th); and 

Letter from General Momir Talic to General Eric Shinseki dated the same day.
187

71. HQ SFOR, Chief Faction Liaison Office, MEMORANDUM FOR COMSFOR, [SUBJECT] GENERAL TALIC’S 

RESPONSE TO COMSFOR-VRS 5TH CORPS SA-7 SYSTEMS, 29 September 1998, signed Brigadier P.G Williams in 

HQ USAREUR, History Office, Miscellaneous Papers from Commander’s Initiatives Group, file labeled Talic.

72. Briefing, Elections 98 in HQ, USAREUR, Commander’s Initiative’s Group, Notebook, Prep Book, Visit of Mr. 

Pieter C. Feith, Director, Bosnia Task Force, 27 August 1998.

73. Comments by Kelly Moore, UNMIBH and Lt. Cdr. Sheena Thomson, SFOR in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint 

Press Conference, 8 September 1998, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo. See also 

comments by Kelly Moore, UNMIBH in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 22 September 1998, 1145 Hours, 

OSCE/EU General Elections Media Center, Skenderija, Sarajevo.

74. Analysis is in Office of the High Representative, Document, Report of the High Representative for Implementation 

of the Peace Agreement to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 14 October 1998, para. 3 and 48-53. http://

www.ohr.int/reports/r981014a.htm. COMSFOR would likely not have agreed that election of Jelavic vice Zubac was 

a gain. 

75. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Miscellaneous Briefings, Briefing titled, SFOR Briefing, 13 

June 1998 (scripted as Oberammergau SFOR Briefing, 12 June 1998). 

76. Instructions described by Rida Attarashany, OHR and Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR in HQ SFOR, 

Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 27 October 1998, 1135 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, 

Sarajevo. Circumstances of presentation in EXSUM of Meeting of COMSFOR with EAF Commanders, 23 October 

1998, dated 26 October 1998, prepared by LTC [Ken] McCreedy, USA, Special Assistant to COMSFOR, in HQ 

USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, November 1998. 

Instruction was mentioned in the SHAPE News Summary and Analysis, released by Supreme Headquarters Allied 

Powers Europe, SHAPE Belgium on 26 October 1998.

77. The 1st Guards Corps was effectively the field headquarters of the Croat faction army. There was only one 

corps.

78. Some of this correspondence can be found in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, 

Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, September, 1998, specifically letters to Zubak, Jelavic, and Budimir, dated 

4 September, and another letter to Zubak dated 29 September 1998. Additional correspondence is in HQ SFOR, 

Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG-1998, November. See particularly the 

Memorandum, dated 7 November 1998, from Chief Faction Liaison Office, HQ SFOR, SUBJECT: WESTENDORPSHINSKI DECLARATION--PROPOSED NEXT STEPS, signed by Brigadier P. G. Williams, Chief Faction Liaison 

Office.

79. Letter from COMSFOR to President Kresimir Zubak, dated 29 September 1998, attachment to 7 November 

Memorandum, WESTENDORP-SHINSEKI DECLARATION--PROPOSED NEXT STEPS, in HQ SFOR, Office of the 

Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG-1998, November.

80. HQ SFOR, Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to His Excellency President Ante Jelavic, 

dated November 27, 1998 in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, CG (Meigs) Signature Files, 

1998-99. 

81. Comments by Simon Haselock, OHR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 28 July 1998, 1130 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo and in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference 30 

July 1998, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

82. Reported by Alexander Ivanko, UNMIBH in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 9 July 1998, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks, Sarajevo.

83. Comments by Kelly Moore, UNMIBH in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 15 September 1998, 1130 

Hours, OSCE/EU General Elections Media Center, Skenderija, Sarajevo.
188

84. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 8 June 2000, 1200 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito 

Barracks.

85. Office of the High Representative, OHR Press Statement Press Statement on the Serb Radical Party, Sarajevo, 13 

August 1998. http://www.oht.int/press/p980813a.htm. In September, a decision was made to dismiss some subordinate 

SRS Candidates, though not Nikola Poplasen, who won the Presidency, on another issue having to do with Poplasen 

broadcasting after a pre-election deadline. Comments by Nicole Szulc, OSCE in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press 

Conference, 22 September 1998, 1145 Hours, OSCE/EU General Elections Media Center, Skenderija, Sarajevo.

86. Under the Dayton constitution the Entities retained defense ministries. The central government did not.

87. Letter from General Shinseki, COMSFOR, to Ambassador [Carlos] Westendorp, dated October 12, 1998, in 

HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, CG (Shinseki) Signature Files, 1998.

88. Joint letter dated October 21, 1998, from the Office of the High Representative and Hq, SFOR. Letter has no 

subject line. It is an attachment to the 7 November Memorandum, WESTENDORP-SHINSEKI DECLARATION--

PROPOSED NEXT STEPS, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG1998, November.

89. HQ, USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, NAC Speech, 21 October 1998--7th Draft, 20 October 98. 

Provided to the author by LTC “Rocky” Gay, USA, General Shinseki’s speech writer at the time.

90. Ibid.

91. Quoted, Ibid.
189

CHAPTER 8

SELF-ANALYSIS:

INTELLECTUAL WARFARE AND THE BATTLE OF IDEAS

When he took command of USAREUR and SFOR, General Shinseki set Colonel John 

Drinkwater, the chief of the International Operations Division of the USAREUR Deputy Chief 

of Staff for Operations (DCSOPS) staff, to work on formulating a detailed strategy for SFOR. 

This effort was compartmentalized to begin with, putting John Drinkwater in the odd position 

of being unable to tell his boss, the USAREUR DCSOPS, then Major General B. B. Bell, just what 

he was doing. The point of General Shinseki’s effort was to employ the considerable talents 

resident in his parallel national staff as a sort of “skunk works” to help him think through the 

direction he should take as Commander, Stabilization Force, without the constraints imposed by 

the various national agendas to be found on the NATO staff. Drinkwater’s planning, in which 

Paul Quintal also played a pivotal role, was an educational exercise for the commander. Its 

conclusions, fed to General Shinseki over a period of months, inevitably found their way into his 

fundamental understanding of his problem and thus into the long-term programs he established 

at SFOR.1 It is characteristic in many ways that, having spent significant time thinking about 

where he was going even while stressed by the pace of events in his first 5 months in command, 

General Shinseki would then consistently pursue the course set down for the remainder of his 

tenure. 

During his second year in command of Stabilization Force (SFOR), General Shinseki began 

to formulate a new construct, “Intellectual Warfare and the Battle of Ideas,” to explain the 

requirements of a military force actively engaged in what only recently was derided as nationbuilding. The roots of “Intellectual Warfare” doubtless lay in ideas produced from 3 years of 

collective experience in the field, in IFOR and SFOR, and from insights produced by staff efforts 

like the earlier Burns-Heredia strategy, the Drinkwater studies, and a multitude of efforts by his 

staffs and initiatives groups. A number of key ideas can be traced to the fertile mind of Brigadier 

General J. B. Burns, by this time the assistant chief of staff for operations (ACOS-OPS). But it 

would be off the mark to see the Commander, SFOR (COMSFOR) as no more than a mouthpiece 

for clever staff officers. 

General Shinseki had come to the Bosnia problem without much background on the issues, 

but those who worked with him found him a quick study, and he learned from his experiences 

and those of others. Drafters of briefings and speechwriters who addressed intellectual warfare 

were trying to capture the COMSFOR’s ideas in a form with which he would be comfortable. 

In the end, the notions mattered only because he subscribed to them and presented them 

as his own. In 1998, he spent a great deal of energy and time presenting them to a flood of 

visiting dignitaries and political figures as well as his own service--part of his own information 

campaign.

Apparently, Shinseki first mentioned intellectual warfare in a briefing at the Armor 

Conference in May 1998. There, the scripted comment says only that the commander had to 

know his adversaries: “Each day I ask what did I get out of the adversaries today and what are 

my moves tomorrow.”2 He also emphasized the importance in peace operations of all leaders 

anticipating second and third order effects of every action taken. The conference presentation 

is also significant because, in contrast to the marked reluctance with which the US political and 

military leaders had undertaken Balkan operations 2 1/2 years before, General Shinseki began 

his remarks to the Army’s heavy force with the observation that: 

Today, the Army must be ready for operations across the entire spectrum, from high intensity 
190

conflict to peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. We need to be ready for operations like 

Bosnia.

This public acceptance of the legitimacy of the Bosnia mission indicates a significant change 

of attitude on the part of the Army’s leadership. Senator Carl Levin had observed the change 

earlier, during a visit to SFOR in January. Levin remarked to Shinseki that, whereas the military 

was initially reluctant to go to Bosnia, now he was hearing from military leaders that they 

should stay longer.3

As the year progressed, Shinseki kept considering the nature of what he was doing and 

refining his basic construct. One can follow various ideas like threads through successive 

presentations. He brought his ideas together in three didactic briefings developed toward the 

end of his tenure in command. One was a general briefing given in September 1998 before the 

Army Staff in Washington, DC. Two others were drawn up to stimulate discussion that same 

month with retired General Fred Franks at Shinseki’s headquarters in Sarajevo. 

General Fred Franks had commanded the Army’s VII Corps in the Gulf War. He led the US 

Army Training and Doctrine Command through a massive post-Cold War downsizing. Upon 

retiring, he became a senior mentor for the Army’s Battle Command Training Program. As such, 

he evaluated the leadership and training of a large number of Army divisions and corps and 

therefore had a good perspective of how various units stacked up compared to a rough norm. 

Franks, the principal author of the Army’s then current operations manual, Field Manual 100-

5, Operations (1993), was known to be a thoughtful and insightful officer and was able to give 

Shinseki a view into the intellectual as well as practical health of the Army. Shinseki brought 

Franks to Europe a month before he (Shinseki) gave up his commands. He sponsored Franks 

in visits to Army forces throughout Central Europe and Bosnia to observe training and talk to 

soldiers, NCOs, and commissioned officers. Then he had Franks come to SFOR headquarters. 

There, in a vigorous give-and-take discussion, Shinseki briefed him about what he called “Full 

Dimensional Peace Operations.” 

The object of the briefing was to get Franks to think with him about how the Army should 

prepare officers for operations like Bosnia. That Shinseki asked the question implied that he, 

like many of his fellow US senior leaders in Bosnia, believed that their career experiences had 

not been quite on target for the requirements of most of the tasks they had been asked to perform 

since the end of the Cold War. The content of the briefing provides a window on what General 

Shinseki thought he had learned during the 1 1/2 years he had wrestled with the problem of 

peace operations. The presentation’s central theme was that the operational commander in 

Bosnia found himself dealing with a nearly intractable problem that was more political than 

military. Indeed, a quotation attributed to General of the Army George C. Marshall focused the 

main point. Marshall had said, with regard to his 1939 appointment as Chief of Staff:

It became clear to me that at the age of fifty-eight I would have to learn new tricks that were not 

taught in the military manuals or on the battlefield. In this position I am a political soldier and 

will have to put my training in rapping out orders and making snap decisions on the back burner, 

and have to learn the arts of persuasion and guile. I must become an expert in a whole new set of 

skills.

General Shinseki obviously felt somewhat the same about preparation for his job as 

COMSFOR. 

He framed his presentation around his relationships with the four groups with which he 

had to deal. These were, first of all, the representatives of the international community, not 

just the Principals, but also the 39 ambassadors of troop-contributing countries and the various 

leaders of the interested international bodies and private relief organizations. Then there was 
191

his command, SFOR, with its built-in functional and international constituencies. The third 

group was the authorities of the three Bosnian entities, the officials in the political structure; the 

fourth group, those in the three armed forces. Shinseki offered the observation that the terrain 

on which he operated at his level of command consisted of the Bosnian Government(s) and the 

power structure of the international community. “Knowing how to help and who not to help 

in the government and military is the key to operating effectively and efficiently,” he said.4

Each group, he explained, required different approaches and imposed different demands for 

interaction on him and his command. 

As one of the key leaders in the implementation process, COMSFOR coordinated his 

activities with the Principals through regular, formal, and informal meetings. In the discussion 

with General Franks, General Shinseki observed that the dividing line between the two principal 

Dayton leaders, the civil and the military, was not clean. Things were not neatly divisible into 

matters of civil and military implementation, though the High Representative and his staff 

often believed and acted as if they should be. COMSFOR’s responsibilities were now clearly 

focused on using his authority and forces to set conditions for successful civil implementation 

of the Dayton Accords, but he was not subject to the orders of the High Representative. Theirs 

was a relationship of peers, quite unlike the civil-military relationship characteristic of Western 

democratic government. Moreover, because of his ability to act immediately and decisively, 

COMSFOR’s responsibilities involved him in a host of nonmilitary interactions with political 

authorities within Bosnia-Herzegovina and among representatives of the international 

community. In Shinseki’s case, this frequently involved the offer of political advice and 

assistance to pro-Dayton Entity political figures.

Naturally, COMSFOR would be aware of and pay attention to the ambassadors from the 

various troop- and resource-contributing nations. With these, he said, he focused on subjects 

external to Bosnia that might affect mission execution--troop contributions, financial support, 

and the status of Dayton implementation. Notably, he discussed with Franks the dilemma for 

a national officer assigned as a NATO commander. COMSFOR was a NATO official bound 

to act within agreed NATO agendas. US diplomats often failed to understand that, he said, 

particularly with regard to the Train and Equip Program, which was designed largely to build 

up the Bosniacs relative to the Serbs (and Croats).5 US Government officials did not always 

understand when, as COMSFOR, the US general had to take actions antithetical to their 

particular hobbyhorse in order for him to maintain the NATO-mandated evenhanded approach 

to the faction armed forces. “This program and our control and use of it puts SFOR at odds 

with the US State Department,” he told Franks. “As a NATO Commander . . . COMSFOR must 

make decisions that may not be nationally popular.”6 COMSFOR also worried that the Train and 

Equip program might shift the balance of military power. That might tempt the Federation to 

aggressive action against the Serbs, who did not participate in a program designed precisely to 

deprive them of their qualitative military advantage. 

Within SFOR, Shinseki found himself with three audiences or constituencies, the international 

staff, the force itself, and the external forces charged to support SFOR, notably Allied Forces, 

Southern Europe’s (AFSOUTH’s) Strike Force South (the amphibious force), Air Forces, Southern 

Region (AIRSOUTH), and Allied Naval Forces, Southern Europe (NAVSOUTH). By fall of 1998, 

SFOR consisted of about 35,000 troops, representing 39 nations, with 18 NATO battalions and 9 

non-NATO battalions (2 of which were Polish and Czech--both on the verge then of joining the 

North Atlantic Alliance), organized into the three framework divisions. The operational reserve 

included the new Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU).

At first, SFOR and some NATO nations were reluctant to accept a paramilitary police body. 

The principal fears seem to have been the dread of finding SFOR involved routinely in police 

work and a concern that assigning a body of paramilitary police would reduce the number of 
192

combat forces already thought to be the bare minimum required to perform assigned military 

tasks. For its part, the International Police Task Force (IPTF) resisted the assignment of actual 

police forces, particularly paramilitaries. The irony was, as the North Atlantic Council (NAC) 

had recognized, the MSU filled a serious gap (one that worried both SFOR and the IPTF) between 

purely military forces, generally untrained and ill-equipped for crowd and riot control, and the 

Entity police forces, often unwilling to confront their own people. This gap was particularly 

worrisome since, by 1997, it was clear that the entities’ operational weapon of choice was the 

“rent-a-mob,” and the Entity police were not always reliable. Crowd and riot control was a 

design specialty of the MSU, though SFOR insisted its use for crowd control would not become a 

matter of course, relieving the Entity police from their responsibilities. Because of their ubiquity 

and law enforcement training, MSU units rapidly became both popular intelligence gatherers 

and desired reinforcements for multinational divisions (MNDs) confronted with problems of 

local unrest. The MSU remained an SFOR reserve force under control of COMSFOR except 

when assigned a specific support mission in a divisional area of responsibility. Companies were 

assigned habitual relationships with specific MND headquarters.

The SFOR staff, another military constituency, was an integrated alliance organization 

composed of officers from the contributing NATO nations. During the final period of General 

Shinseki’s term of command, the key leaders were a French lieutenant general as deputy 

commander, a British lieutenant general as deputy commander for operations, and a German 

major general as chief of staff. At the next tier was an American major general assistant chief of 

staff for military operations; an Italian major general assistant chief of staff for civil operations; 

and two brigadiers, a French assistant chief of staff for support and a British Chief, Faction 

Liaison Office (CFLO). All four were nominally subordinate to the chief of staff, although 

the commander often adopted the US practice of dealing directly with his (US) operations 

officer. Below this level, staff directorates reflected mixed nationalities and the quality varied. 

Language was a problem. The language of the headquarters was English, though assigned 

officers displayed a wide range of mastery. Language could be even more of a problem 

vertically, where an order or report moving to a unit in an MND might be translated three or 

four times before arriving at the executing element. Finally, institutional memory was difficult 

in an organization where different national rotation policies could change staff officers in as 

little as 4 months or as many as 12. 

In the battle of ideas entailed by SFOR’s mission, the “frontline formations” were information 

operations, the public affairs office, and organs for civil-military integration, the CIMIC teams.7

Human rather than technical intelligence was vital for leverage. Negotiating skills were essential. 

Negotiating skills were required not just to manipulate the opposition in the form of the antiDayton hardliners, but to influence the civil representatives of the international community to 

work in harmony with NATO goals. The scripted remarks for the September Army Staff briefing 

note: “The people we work with in the complex organizations of the International Community 

are not culturally into planning, and we need negotiation skills to make fundamental planning 

non-threatening.”8 The international community, even nations participating in SFOR, often had 

competing agendas that had to be harmonized if the civil implementation effort was to move 

forward. Execution required consensus, took time, and required an even-handed (one might 

say even-tempered) approach. Civil implementation tasks required the same rigor in planning, 

preparing, and executing as traditional military tasks, but civil operations took much longer.9

Often, the answer was to provide military planners to joint planning bodies so as to inject some 

system to their planning process. 

Shinseki insisted that in conducting intellectual warfare, two traditional personal staff officers 

had to assume a greater general role; moving “from the back to the front bench” was how he put 

it. These were the pubic affairs officer and the legal adviser (LEGAD), both Americans in SFOR. 
193

The public affairs officer was important because it had long been the policy of Implementation 

Force (IFOR)/SFOR that transparency of intentions was a key operating principle.10 When SFOR 

acted in public, it considered it a matter of first importance to explain to the widest audience 

why it was doing what it was doing. Moreover, SFOR was a rule-created organization, and the 

General Framework Agreement for Peace was the rulebook. The LEGAD often found himself 

called on to explain the parameters of what could and could not be done within the confines 

of the Dayton Accords and the other edicts that followed, most notably from the various Peace 

Implementation Council (PIC) conferences. The LEGAD advised not just the COMSFOR and 

the international staff, but the various national forces, embassies, and other civil implementation 

agencies, often presenting the COMSFOR’s legal case for action or inaction. Fairly simple 

military missions could become contentious when this was not done. Indeed, even simple 

orders to subordinate tactical elements could be subject to national legal review before they 

were accepted. LEGAD thus also became involved in drafting various instructions and orders, 

ensuring they were written clearly and in consonance with the terms of the basic agreements.11

Dealing with the Bosnian power structure was more complex. Although he was the military 

leader, COMSFOR met frequently with the political leaders of the Entities. There was always 

the danger that the international community would speak with more than one voice on a 

particular issue. Coordination was desirable. When it failed, the effort suffered, sometimes 

for prolonged periods. Because of the complicated governmental structure adopted in Bosnia 

to avoid centralization of power by one authority or another and because real power often lay 

outside the formal political and bureaucratic systems, selecting the point of entry into the Bosnian 

power grid required a certain amount of art and understanding of where authority actually lay: 

“In knowing who to help,” as Shinseki had said. The continuous interchange with the Serb 

leadership on all sides during the Republika Srpska (RS) political crisis is simply the most graphic 

example. Such contacts were frequent and important to the general implementation effort. 

They were also among the reasons a four-star military commander was necessary for the SFOR 

post, notwithstanding the relatively small size of the forces present. The COMSFOR interacted 

with the national and Entity presidents and political leaders regularly, both by personal contact 

and in writing, and on issues that were often more policy related than purely military. The view 

of some civilians that COMSFOR got out of a purely military lane on occasion was not entirely 

incorrect. On the other hand, he was the local representative of an international political body 

of long standing whose goals were as comprehensive as those of the ad hoc bodies to which 

the High Representative reported. Moreover, it is clear that the military mandate in Dayton 

had been deliberately constructed to provide the NATO commander the independence he and 

his predecessors exercised, not least because of a lack of confidence in the military judgment of 

international civil appointees.

Contact with the Entity armed forces (and there remained essentially three, separate and 

distinct) was structured more formally. General Shinseki relegated most meetings with faction 

military leaders to the Deputy Commander for Operations (DCOMOPS), so that, he said, 

when he called personally, they would know it was important.12 In 1998, he made it a point 

to meet socially with the leaders of the Entity armies to facilitate communication and mutual 

understanding. The DCOMOPS met with the Entity military chiefs regularly and chaired the 

periodic national Joint Military Commission Meetings called for under the Dayton Accords. 

COMSFOR Instructions to the Entity Armed Forces, drafted for the commander by the CFLO, 

were formal documents with the effect of law. These were the directives by which COMSFOR 

initiated those actions he deemed “necessary and proper . . . to protect IFOR and to carry out 

the responsibilities” listed in Annex 1A. What COMSFOR deemed necessary and proper was 

increasingly broad in its focus. It reached, finally, into oversight of general officer selection in 

the three faction armies.
194

After extension of the NATO mandate in June 1998, COMSFOR’s mission was to

deter hostilities and stabilize the peace contributing to a secure environment by providing a 

continued military presence in the Area of Responsibility, and to target and coordinate SFOR 

support to key areas and primary civil implementation organizations; and progress towards 

a lasting consolidation of the peace, without further need for NATO-led Forces in Bosnia and 

Herzegovina.13

This new wording reflected less a change in direction than shifts in focus already realized over 

time, but now capable of finding explicit consensus on the NAC. General Shinseki’s analysis 

was that to achieve this dual mission there were two centers of gravity with which he had to be 

concerned. He believed the center of gravity of the opponents of the Dayton Accords resided 

in their ability to act with impunity.14 Establishing the rule of law could overcome this source of 

power. SFOR’s strategic center of gravity was the international consensus necessary to sustain 

the effort to establish the desired Bosnian state. For this effort to continue, visible progress was 

required. 

To achieve the goal of establishing the rule of law while maintaining sufficient momentum 

to encourage continued international support, COMSFOR had identified 10 separate lines of 

operations and three specific tasks. All were directed either toward establishing professional 

armed forces loyal to the Dayton Accords or creating irreversible momentum toward the rule 

of law. These lines of operation plus completion of media restructuring, detention of persons 

indicted for war crimes (PIFWCs), and continued attention to Brcko’s special situation defined 

the campaign plan for Bosnia. In Shinseki’s view, this reflected refocusing SFOR effort from 

military tasks to about an 85 percent commitment to civil implementation. In the divisions, 

of course, treaty compliance remained the first and essential task. Shinseki told Fred Franks 

he still ensured security with 150 daily patrols, 200 monthly site inspections, and maintenance 

of airspace control.15 Not coincidentally, Shinseki had undertaken an international sales 

campaign during 1998 to convince various international audiences that the game was worth 

the candle. His personal schedules are crowded with visits by various dignitaries and 

decisionmakers, each of whom was handled in a very deliberate and calculated way so that 

they left with the proper message. COMSFOR was the pointman in the information operation.16

Finally, SFOR had developed a concept to deal at the operational level with incidents 

of resistance. It was called the “Action--Reaction--Counter Action” (sometimes “Counter 

Reaction”) process. As in so many things in Bosnia, this concept expressed and systematized 

practices learned over time. General Shinseki’s first articulation of a method can be found in 

an August 1997 version of the SFOR Update Briefing prepared originally for General Crouch, 

notably the “Event Methodology” mentioned earlier (see Chapter 4).17 By the end of his 

command, Shinseki had embodied these principles in an operational framework for responding 

over time and space to overt and covert challenges to the Dayton Accords. 

The Action-Reaction-Counter Action Process recognized two fundamental facts, neither of 

which was new. First, that the international community (not just SFOR) was opposed by 

a system of organized and varied forces capable of independent and imaginative action in 

opposition to implementation of the Dayton Accords. Because these forces were organized, 

they could respond either directly or horizontally across the theater of operations, in kind or at 

higher levels of resistance. The conclusion was that knowledge of the web of legal, illegal, and 

extralegal connections was necessary to anticipate potential event response sites before trouble 

broke out and to locate vulnerabilities on the web of influence that might not otherwise be 

apparent. Human intelligence was absolutely vital to identify the webs of influence. Most such 

networks had connections that reached outside Bosnia, some into the governments of Croatia or 
195

the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Discrimination in response was key to achieving the 

best effect. All this amounted to recognition that SFOR was engaged in nonlinear and asymmetric 

conflict. By anticipating second and third order responses to incidents and carefully selecting 

the proper point to apply pressure, the international community could realize a multiplier effect 

in the effectiveness of its limited means.

The second point was that comprehensive (both direct and indirect) and asymmetrical 

responses by the international community could be more effective than mere military 

counteraction to specific challenges. Reply by raw force might only escalate violence. SFOR had 

to be more discriminating and urge its partners to be more clever, minimize direct confrontation, 

and select more effective and often nonmilitary means to register the pleasure and displeasure 

of the international community. The Bosnian power structure had to be viewed as a system in 

which carefully selected pressure applied to sensitive points could produce disproportionate 

effects elsewhere. To achieve desired results, behavior had to be linked clearly to rewards and 

punishment. Members of the international community had to act as one, if only to increase the 

range of options available to respond to resistance. By taking a comprehensive view, pressure 

could be brought to bear on a variety of institutions vital to the opponents of the Dayton 

Accords. The Udrigovo tower incident was a serendipitous example of producing this kind 

of web effects. The Action-Reaction-Counter Reaction process sought to institutionalize this 

sort of nonlinear warfare and capitalize on it. In the end, this method involved thinking ahead 

of one’s opponents, staying within their decision cycle. Its practice was the operational art of 

intellectual warfare. 

General Shinseki speculated with General Franks about the sorts of experiences that would 

be required to prepare a leader for operational command in a peace enforcement environment 

such as his. These, he opined, would include changes in professional education, assignment 

patterns (particularly to include service on alliance staffs), and participation in peace operations 

exercises. Notably, just as standard concepts of campaign planning proved to be transferable to 

peace enforcement operations, Shinseki’s staff writers found that the draft US Army leadership 

manual then circulating contained a discussion of strategic leadership sufficiently broad to serve 

as a useful framework for the discussion.18 No less important, in spite of his sense of inadequate 

preparation, General Shinseki had a highly sophisticated ability to recognize and analyze the 

problems with which he was faced and the character to do what was required. In short, while 

not denying the obviously real and common perception that they were dealing with issues 

whose content was new to them, US senior leaders do not appear to have been without the 

intellectual and moral resources to successfully confront them.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 8

1. Based on discussion with Colonel Drinkwater and Paul Quintal. Many of Col Drinkwater’s briefings found 

their way into the Shinseki Papers located in the USAREUR History Office.

2. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing, Full Spectrum Leadership for Full Spectrum 

Operations.

3. Notes, Visit by Senators Levin and Reed, dated 2 January 1998, in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives 

Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force, Commander’s Journal, January 1998.

4. Notes taken by LTC Charles G. Heiden, HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, General 

Fred Franks Visit.

5. This strain was evident as Shinseki assumed command. See HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, 

Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, August 1997, slide, “Status of Forces” in Briefing, SFOR Update, 7 August 

1997.
196

6. Ibid. 

7. HQ, USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Slide, “Implications,” Briefing, Update to the Army Staff, 

dated 6/7/99.

8. Ibid. Script page, slide 29.

9. Ibid., slide 30.

10. This policy dated well back to IFOR. See Lieutenant General Sir Michael Walker, KCB, CBE, “ARRC INTO 

ACTION,” NATO’s SIXTEEN NATIONS, Vol. 41, No. 2/96 (February 1996), 40.

11. Interview with COL Hall, USAREUR Staff Judge Advocate and sometime SFOR LEGAD.

12. Notes taken by LTC Charles G. Heiden, General Fred Franks Visit.

13. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing, Full Dimensional Peace Operations, slide, Peace 

Operations Integration, COMSFOR Mission, dated 5 September 98. Briefing provided to author by LTC Mike 

Drumm, CG’s Initiatives Group.

14. The “Rule of Law” itself was normally presented as the center of gravity. Strictly speaking, the “hub of all 

power” in Clausewitz’ formulation was the absence of “the rule of law.” It was the absence that empowered the 

opposition.

15. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Briefing, SFOR UPDATE for General Frederick 

Franks, Senior Cavalry Officer in Bosnia, Slide titled “Military Achievement.”

16. The Commander’s Initiatives Group files are full of previsit briefings. They also contain some transcripts 

or notes made of discussion during visits. See, for example, undated memorandum, SUBJECT: MINUTES OF 

THE US CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION MEETING 4 APRIL 98 AT THE HEADQUARTERS OF COMSFOR 

IN ILIDZA in HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, 

April 1998.

17. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiative’s Group, Miscellaneous Briefings, Briefing titled, SFOR UPDATE, 

7 August 1997.

18. FM 22-100, Army Leadership, Revised Final Draft, 3 August 1998.
197

CHAPTER 9

TRANSITION: NEW WORLD—NEW TRICKS

Like his predecessor, General Shinseki left one or two substantial tasks for his successor to 

accomplish. Most immediate was the program for the professionalization of the Entity Armed 

Forces that Shinseki and Westendorp had mandated almost as Shinseki walked onto the parade 

field for his change of command. A second task involved creating the rule of law in BosniaHerzegovina, an unusual preoccupation for a soldier, but one to which Meigs would devote 

a surprising amount of attention and energy. Before he could grapple with either task, Meigs 

began changing the Stabilization Force (SFOR) headquarters to function in a manner with which 

he was comfortable and to develop a campaign plan as much a vehicle for team-building as for 

harmonizing action by the written word. 

Meigs conducted his campaigns against a backdrop of significant events, over many of which 

he had only limited control. In December 1998 at Madrid, the Peace Implementation Council 

(PIC) issued more insistent and programmatic instructions than had its predecessors.1 The longdeferred Brcko arbitration decision was finally delivered in March 1999. It was Solomonic in its 

character and absurd in its reasoning (in the sort of tortured logic only lawyers and diplomats 

can love), and it satisfied the parties only to the extent that it deprived all competitors of final 

control of that most strategic area.2 The Republika Srpska (RS) underwent yet another long-term 

political crisis, culminating in the dismissal of the still recently popularly elected president by 

the High Representative on the same day Brcko was decided. Finally, and most important, 

the air war in Kosovo and elsewhere in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) irreversibly 

changed the nature of the Bosnia and Balkan problem. With the first bomb that fell from a 

NATO aircraft on 24 March 1999, rebuilding Bosnia in the Western image became no more than 

a part, indeed a subordinate part, of a more general Balkan reconstruction and reconfiguration. 

The war presented General Meigs with the greatest challenge to his abilities as a statesman and, 

in its aftermath, a most difficult task of matching ends and increasingly scarce means in a form 

that would meet the changed problems remaining in the war’s aftermath. These final matters, 

the Kosovo War and its aftermath, will be the subjects of the next chapter.

Leadership is very much a function of personality. Different minds put the world together 

in different ways, which is reflected in the leadership styles applied by different commanders 

to accomplish the same assigned task. Add to this the fact that no military problem is static for 

long, and one understands that the exercise of command differs markedly as one commander 

succeeds another, even when the mission remains unchanged. The transfer of SFOR command 

from General Eric Shinseki to General Montgomery Meigs provides a study in contrasts that 

illustrates these points in sharp detail.

On the surface, Shinseki and Meigs share a number of characteristics and experiences. Both 

are introverted and protective of their privacy. Both are graduates of the US Military Academy 

at West Point. Both rose out of the armor community, though Shinseki was commissioned 

originally in the field artillery. They served together in Vietnam and, indeed, when Shinseki was 

wounded Meigs gave blood to save him. Both have graduate-level degrees in the humanities 

from good civilian universities. Shinseki holds a Master of Arts degree in English literature 

from Duke University and Meigs a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin. Both 

are brilliant intellectually but in quite different ways. Shinseki seems comfortable with his 

intellectual attainments. Meigs bears his gifts uneasily. He is embarrassed to be known as an 

intellectual. He has spent much of his career trying to overcome that reputation by long hours of 

hard work in the more practical side of his profession, more often as not in the field. As higher 

commanders, both surround themselves to a degree with key subordinates who have worked 
198

for them before--known quantities. Both are thoughtful and self-aware without seeming 

especially introspective.

Shinseki, an Asian-American from Hawaii, is intellectually quick and clever. He is soft 

spoken, but his mind is perpetually active behind a disciplined and impassive exterior. He has 

a remarkable capacity to stimulate a fierce loyalty and protectiveness from his official family 

that remains long after he departs from their presence. Meigs, by way of contrast, is a big man 

with a high forehead and bushy eyebrows. His hair has had the same appearance of thinning 

since he was a cadet at West Point, remarkably without ever actually doing so. When he is 

not engaged, Meigs seldom smiles but seems perpetually lost in thought. His movements are 

slower than Shinseki’s, but they exude power, as his thinking does breadth and depth. Meigs 

can be intimidating physically and intellectually, particularly to strangers. Where Shinseki 

forms off-line organizations of bright junior accomplices to help him with detailed analysis and 

stimulation, Meigs has a self-contained and self-reliant personality. He is a magnet for raw 

information for which he searches from a multitude of sources, formal and informal, direct and 

indirect. He does much of the analysis and conceptualization himself or, much like General 

Crouch, with a small group of trusted senior subordinates. Shinseki is a deductive thinker 

who seeks detailed comprehensive approaches to problems. Meigs is inductive and instinctive, 

something of a simplifier. Whereas Shinseki came to the job from the Army staff and required 

some train-up time, Meigs had the advantage of having been the commander of a multinational 

division (MND) when Implementation Force (IFOR) became SFOR. No assignment would reflect 

more clearly the differences in personal command style between these two highly competent 

commanders than that when Meigs succeeded Shinseki in command of SFOR in October 1998.

Shinseki relied on ad hoc groups, panels, forums, etc. to help him analyze his mission and 

plan his strategies in great detail. Most notable among these were his commander’s initiatives 

groups (he had two, a US group and an international group) and, back in Heidelberg, the lessvisible body chaired by John Drinkwater in the International Operations Division of the US 

Army Europe (USAREUR) Staff. In his headquarters, Shinseki relied on his American CJ3, 

the ubiquitous Major General Julian Burns, for mid- and short-term planning and execution. 

Shinseki and his colonels seem to some extent to have suffered from the hubris of the deductive 

analyst in the belief that if their planning encompassed enough variables, it would be possible to 

largely negate the forces of chance and friction. The culmination of their efforts was a complex 

campaign plan, in the form of a massive wall chart, with ten lines of operation portrayed 

vertically as a series of second, third, fourth, and fifth order actions. When Meigs was briefed 

on this matrix immediately after he assumed command, he decided he would take a different 

approach. General Clark had made it clear that Shinseki’s plan was not his, probably because 

Clark saw development of a long-term strategy in Sarajevo as an intrusion by the operational 

commander into the sphere of the SACEUR. Meigs was soon aware in any event that the 

presence of the US Initiatives Group had created suspicions among the international officers 

in the headquarters about existence of an alternate (US) staff. Meigs replaced the wall chart, 

with its lines of operations and detail, with the Meigs Triangle, drawn out by hand on a “white 

board” in his office.

Monty Meigs believes profoundly in two principles of operation: simplicity and making the 

formal structure work. He also believes in staying in his own lane, though he believes loyalty 

demands giving a senior commander his best judgments and private advice for reconsideration 

when initial orders seem ill-advised. He is not a “yes man.” Conscious of the jealousy with 

which the SACEUR guarded his prerogatives in the Balkans, Meigs made a deliberate effort 

to keep General Clark comfortable. He kept his boss informed each evening by e-mail on what 

SFOR was doing, and he took care to stay within his responsibilities and not tread on those of 

the politician or strategist--at least within the parameters of NATO command.3 If he believed an 
199

order ill-advised, he would provide alternative routes to what he perceived to be the objective 

and loyally carry out the decisions made. Like General Shinseki, Meigs sometimes found it 

difficult not to intrude on ground contested by the Office of the High Representative (OHR), 

though here too he struggled to respect Westendorp’s sensitivities.

Meigs’ first major programmatic objective as Commander, Stabilization Force (COMSFOR) 

was to allow the international NATO headquarters staff to do what it was designed to do.4 His 

intention was to empower the senior international officers with the authority commensurate 

with their experience and position and to enlist them in what must be described as a corporate 

approach to the leadership of the international mission they all shared. He believed he could 

gain leverage vis-à-vis the international community within which he worked and overcome 

some of the friction imposed by national limitations on the use of contributed military forces 

by co-opting the senior national officers through their participation in the campaign design. To 

achieve these ends, he would have to empower the senior NATO officers and engage them in a 

team-building exercise. 

From October to December 1998, he led what amounted to a running seminar, building a 

campaign plan from the Meigs Triangle vision of what SFOR should be about. The resulting 

document was not as important as the discussions held with the leaders of the headquarters 

and the similar process conducted with the division commanders, which built a reasonable 

consensus about what SFOR was to do and instilled a clear understanding of the commander’s 

views. Simply put, the Meigs Triangle reflects the view that Bosnian political power grew out 

of an undesirable set of overlapping and intertwining relationships between political parties 

dominated by the ethnic hardliners, paramilitaries, faction armies, police, various intelligence 

services, and criminal organizations. If the Dayton Accords were to move forward, these 

links would have to be cut and a system of checks and balances developed to produce a more 

typically Western political structure governed by the rule of law. SFOR operations would have 

to aim at this objective while tactical units maintained peace in the field by guaranteeing the 

good behavior of the three faction armies. In content, this view was not much different than 

Shinseki’s. Meigs just simplified the vision. 

The new COMSFOR pointedly drew into his confidence the senior NATO officers on his 

staff. Meigs, who speaks both French and German, established a close personal relationship 

with his three most senior headquarters subordinates, his Deputy Commander (DCOM), French 

Lieutenant General Bruno Elie, his Deputy Commander for Operations (DCOMOPS), British 

Lieutenant General Jack Deverell, and his German Chief of Staff, first Major General Hubert 

Gosch, then particularly Major General Karl-Heinz Lather. Elie, a typically laconic Frenchman, 

was a former French intelligence chief. Lather, a big man, like Meigs, was serving in SFOR while 

he held an appointment as a division commander in Germany. Jack Deverell was a “muddy 

boots” infantryman. As a group, they seemed to get along well. Deverell would leave in March, 

Elie and Lather later in the spring. One of the problems SFOR commanders lived with was high 

turbulence in headquarters personnel and, with it, a foreshortened institutional memory.

A vital support Meigs found in place when he arrived was the Assistant Chief of Staff for 

Military Operations, US Major General John Sylvester. Sylvester was a contemporary of Meigs, 

a fellow brigade commander in the Gulf War, and a friend of long standing on whom Meigs 

could rely as a confidant and alter ego. Sylvester knew the Bosnia problem. He had been 

with the Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) when it came to Sarajevo 

in 1995. Understanding the commander’s desire to emphasize the functioning of the NATO 

staff, Sylvester did his best to be sensitive to his structural subordination to the German Chief 

of Staff and to the functional oversight of the DCOMOPS, whose office was directly across a 

common reception area and whose responsibilities generally included the direction for the 

COMSFOR of day-to-day operations. Sylvester’s job was not easy, and a certain balancing act 
200

was required on all issues, particularly since some of his tasks concerned general SFOR matters, 

and others US-specific.5 Indeed, making the troika of deputy commanders and chief of staff 

work smoothly required a lot of nurturing by the commander himself as individual charters 

inevitably overlapped and national and personal egos were involved. Meigs’ lack of pretense 

and fundamental humanity were most useful in making this sometimes awkward structure 

function.

Making the SFOR staff work did not stop with the inner core, however. NATO staffs are 

international political as well as functional military organizations. In addition to the deputy 

commanders and chief of staff, which took care of the British, French, and German interests, 

two other international officers had to be accommodated for national as well as personal 

reasons. One was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations, Major General 

Carlo Alfonso Giannatiempo. Giannatiempo was the most colorful officer in the inner circle. 

An Italian cavalry officer of great enthusiasms, dedication, and loyalties, General Giannatiempo 

was present in part because the SFOR effort depended on various aspects of the civil-military 

effort, particularly in the increasingly sensitive area of refugee returns, and also to give Italy a 

seat at the table of deliberations. Then, too, there was the NATO Political Adviser, or POLAD, 

Mr. Luis Sampaio. Sampaio was a Portuguese diplomat with connections to the NATO political 

structure, particularly to Secretary General Javier Solana. The NATO POLAD represented the 

view of the small NATO countries and the civil bureaucracy of the North Atlantic Alliance. He 

provided essential support to the commander by assisting him in his movements within both 

the Bosnia political structures, the multifaceted complexities of the international community 

within Bosnia, and back to the NATO policy bureaucracy. Meigs came to rely on the judgments 

of Luis Sampaio, who proved to be an accomplished diplomat with sound instincts. To add 

to the complexity of the headquarters, the Commander (US), DCOM (FR), and the DCOMOPS 

(UK) had their own national POLADs whose individual relationships with the NATO POLAD 

sometimes rested uneasily in their general ambiguity.

A staff should be nothing more than an extension of the commander. This truism is a bit 

tortured in an alliance where the various staff principals represent and protect the positions of 

their governments as well as those of their immediate commander. This, of course, is not NATO 

policy, but it is a fact in all cases at some level. No nation, least of all the United States, commits 

forces to an allied effort without reservation. The key staff officers can carry the yellow and red 

cards, to use the common soccer analogy, for their governments.6 Their views must be taken 

seriously when they dissent with proposed policy, both for practical and philosophical reasons. 

If they become part of the decision process, they can be used as part of the sales team, and 

Meigs was particularly aware of that. As COMSFOR, Meigs, like Shinseki, recognized he was 

a player in a wider and polymorphous political structure made up of various sets of national 

and supranational representatives in Bosnia. He set out to cultivate in particular the leaders 

of the key international agencies, the Principals, the ambassadors of the Western members of 

the Contact Group, and the diplomatic representatives of the NATO and troop-contributing 

nations. He made sure that each Contact Group ambassador was in contact with the senior 

member of the headquarters from his country and that the subordinate was as comfortable as 

possible representing COMSFOR’s views and programs. Whereas Shinseki had tried to use 

the Principals Meetings to stay in concert with and guide the other international players, this 

proved no longer useful because Westendorp stopped attending Principals meetings. Meigs 

followed suit. Meigs then used informal dinners at his headquarters as a way to stay in touch 

personally and to stay informed. 

It has already been indicated that General Meigs is a consumer of information. He is also 

uninterested in regular formal staff briefings of the sort taught in staff colleges. At SFOR, he kept 

informed by calling in those with access to useful information; by spending about half his day 
201

or more out of his office in the area of operations talking to unit commanders, Bosnian political 

figures, diplomats, and other international players; and by an executive breakfast to start each 

day with his principal deputies. Periodically, Meigs would adjust the number of attendees 

at his breakfasts, but the politics of the headquarters inevitably demanded representation at 

least by the senior military members of the Contact Group nations. For the first 8 months 

attendees included the two DCOMs, the chief of staff, the assistant chiefs of staff for military 

and civil operations, the Chief, Faction Liaison Office (CFLO) (Brigadier P. G. Williams, and 

then Brigadier Roy Wilde, both British), the CJ2 (Lieutenant Colonel Bill Caniano, and then 

Colonel Steve Boltz, both US), and the public affairs officer, (Colonel Kevin Kelley, and then 

most brilliantly Colonel Lee Hockman).

Meigs brought in Lee Hockman to be his Public Affairs Officer in January 1999. He wanted 

Hockman to inject some energy in the Headquarters information operations. Hockman, a former 

executive officer to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, had worked for Meigs 

when Hockman was the editor of the Army’s Command and General Staff College journal, 

Military Review, Meigs being Commandant at Fort Leavenworth at the time. The presence of 

the public affairs officer requires some comment. Meigs was quite conscious of the role public 

information played in peace operations. 

Getting the story out in the media--here’s what we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing it, here’s 

our rationale for doing it, here’s our justification for doing it. It’s very important that the SFOR 

story be clear in the public domain, in the audiences that affect decisionmaking.7

Meigs was sensitive to the importance of his public face, particularly before Bosnian and 

alliance audiences. He responded to Hockman’s initiatives and made himself available in 

public forums. He was good on camera, and his frankness and fundamental honesty played 

well with skeptical news media. Hockman’s skills were recognized, and in return he was given 

the access and involvement that made it possible for him to deliver the quality of unmediated 

public access the commander desired. Both men were skillful enough in what they were about 

that the media were not overused to the detriment of the measured distancing required by the 

military commander in what was still an occupied country. An appearance by the COMSFOR 

remained an event.

Sylvester, the DCOMs, chief of staff, CJ2, and often the CFLO would meet with Meigs again 

in the evening to compare notes on the day’s events. In addition, the commander participated 

in daily Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE) video teleconferences with the 

SACEUR. The CJ2, always an American, was regularly in and out of the commander’s office 

throughout the day, and the assistant chief of staff for military operations and CFLO quite often 

as well. The important point is the triple function played by each senior international staff 

officer. Each provided the commander essential pieces of information that allowed Meigs to do 

his job without immersing himself in continuous routine briefings. Each played an active role 

in carrying out his program, but the alliance officers also were intended to be part of a corporate 

NATO face to the world. To maintain that face, they had to be consulted and listened to. Their 

willing participation was a multiplier for headquarters effectiveness, and Meigs spent a lot of 

personal time cultivating that benefit in ways a single-nation commander would not be required 

to do.

The manner in which Meigs dealt with two early issues illustrates his character, indicating 

that in spite of his elevated position, he had not forgotten what life was like at the tactical level. 

One of these issues involved authorizing the use of pepper spray. The other was a statement of 

philosophy for dealing with incidents of overt obstruction. 

The first problem had been percolating since the riot in Drvar the previous April. An issue 
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surfaced then was the absence in Canadian and other formations of nonlethal means of crowd 

control or self-defense. After the riot, General Clark had written to the Canadian Chief of Defense 

Staff suggesting that training using nonlethal means might be useful for the Canadian soldiers 

sent to Bosnia. The Canadians had agreed, and subject to limitations they approved the use of 

pepper spray. This set off a prolonged argument among the legal advisers at SHAPE and SFOR 

about the proper point and occasion for releasing any crowd control agent. Meigs, typically, 

cut through the metaphysics of the dispute, seeing clearing that the debate had become more 

intellectual than practical, failing to distinguish between crowd control, a police function, and 

self-defense, an inherent right. He wrote to Clark that the proper policy was for release only in 

instances of self-defense, where the spray could be a measure intermediate between too little 

and lethal force. Meigs wrote to General Maurice Baril, the Chief of Defense Staff of Canada, 

describing his policy and intent to authorize SFOR personnel to use individual pepper spray 

dispensers in self-defense. “I have great faith,” he concluded, “in the ability to make timely and 

accurate distinctions between circumstances requiring my authorization prior to the release of 

RCM [riot control munitions], and those that involve the inherent right of self-defense, which, 

of course, require no prior release authority.”8 

This tone was consistent with some subtle guidance that Meigs gave to the commander of 

the Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU) in a letter complimenting the unit’s conduct in its first 

confrontation earlier in the month he took command. In a draft note containing reference to a 

belief that negotiation was “the best way forward,” Meigs crossed out these words and inserted 

“crucial first step.” He added, “This incident emphasizes the importance of negotiation supported 

by a presence that indicates the use of force if force is required as a means of conflict resolution.” 

[Emphasis added] Montgomery Meigs intended that SFOR would speak softly but carry a big 

and visible stick.9

Two major initiatives occupied the energies of the SFOR headquarters during the 

period leading to the war in Kosovo. These were the fleshing out and enforcement of the 

professionalization program for the faction armies (broached in Chapter 7); and the initiation 

of a Meigs’ campaign to clean up the Croatian Triangle (Stolac--Mostar--Capljina) and create 

a program to confront the Renner Company and other criminal enterprises. In addition, there 

were two significant detentions of Serb persons indicted for war crimes (PIFWCs); SFOR was 

required to clear Croatian police from the border area around the town of Martin Brod in the 

Federation; the RS president was sacked; and the Brcko decision was announced.

The formal program for officer professionalization began with the 21 October letter from 

General Shinseki and the High Representative to the three Tri-Presidents of Bosnia-Herzegovina 

and the two Entity presidents. This letter announced a policy, but it did not articulate how it 

would be put into place. The principle put forth was that “officers should swear sole allegiance 

to the constitution, without a requirement for personal loyalty to a political party or person.” 10 

To give effect to this goal of an apolitical military faction, officers already had been forbidden 

to engage in partisan political activity.11 Political leaders were now forbidden to manipulate 

armed forces for political purposes. To this end, the Westendorp-Shinseki Declaration (WSD) 

stated, “We have therefore decided that for an indefinite period no action to remove, suspend, 

demote, or place in military power any General Officer in Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be 

made without the written approval of the Commander, Stabilization Force.”12 In addition, the 

two officials also stated their intention to clarify procedures for exercising civilian command 

over the military, an issue between Entity and state constitutions. Any remaining doubts about 

the extent to which the international community had taken on the attributes of sovereignty 

in Bosnia must surely have been put to rest by this assertion of executive oversight of senior 

officer advancement within the faction armies. A strict constructionist would be hard pressed 

to find the authority asserted in the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP), but strict 
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constructionists were few by 1998.13 That there was no popular objection indicates the extent to 

which the Bosnia-Herzegovina body politic had accepted the intervention of the international 

community as the honest broker in Bosnian affairs. It is also notable that the Entity armies 

(Croat faction excepted) appear to have accepted the logic of the program with less difficulty 

than either the Croat or Serb political leaderships.

Although General Shinseki had signed the joint letter with the High Representative, it 

fell to General Meigs to flesh out the policy with programs. He did this in Chapter 14 to the 

Commander’s Instructions to the Parties. There were two versions. The first, change 12 to the 

Instructions to the Parties, was issued at a December 1998 Joint Military Committee meeting 

at SFOR Headquarters.14 The second version was issued on 1 February 1999, completing the 

process envisioned by General Meigs at the start while responding to attempts by the tireless 

General Sopta and others to evade the Instruction’s principles.15 Between the promulgations of 

these two documents, Meigs’ authority was challenged by the Serbs and by the Croats. His firm, 

unequivocal response demonstrated to anyone who doubted that SFOR was still the power to 

respect in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Chapter 14 was titled, “Entity Armed Forces in a Democratic Society, Ethics, and 

Professionalism.” It aimed to ensure on the part of all general officers an appropriate degree of 

professional competence, political neutrality, and support for the Dayton peace process. In turn, 

it protected the generals from political purges. It declared such purges to be threats to the GFAP, 

the peace process, and general security. Chapter 14 established “standards of professionalism, 

rules of ethical guidance, and procedures for monitoring compliance.”16 It envisioned that SFOR 

would find support for a program of professional development opportunities for the leaders of 

the Entity Armed Forces. The document stated the commander’s intention to establish an Office 

of Inspector General to oversee the standards of the selection process. This office ultimately 

would be subordinate to the state Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM). The Office 

of Inspector General was not simply a means to institutionalize the standards of professional 

conduct. It was also a vehicle to strengthen the only common military organ and thus help 

provide a “state dimension” to Bosnian security affairs. The provisions of Dayton that left two 

legitimate and in essence three separate standing armies in the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina 

were becoming a matter of increasing concern to the international community. 17

Chapter 14 listed some general requirements for military competence (extensive experience, 

successful professional development--largely education) and character (integrity, loyalty, and a 

record of selfless service). It required submission of a financial disclosure form that would be 

made available to the public. It indicated that indictment or even investigation for war crimes 

would require dismissal. It forbade any political involvement more active than voting or a 

neutral encouragement to others to vote. It stated its expectation that officers would support 

Dayton. Anti-Dayton activities or obstruction would be grounds for dismissal. Then, it dropped 

the hammer. Entity Defense Ministers were required to conduct a baseline review of all serving 

general officers by 15 March 1999, including the requirement for a public personal and financial 

disclosure report. Certification reports were then required from the Ministers of Defense to 

COMSFOR. The reports were to be submitted with the disclosure forms. Disclosure forms were 

to be updated annually. Effective immediately, the chapter went on to make clear, no general 

officer’s status was to be changed by promotion, demotion, removal, suspension, or retirement 

without written approval of COMSFOR. Noncompliance would be dealt with, the instruction 

warned, by action against either the party or officer deemed guilty. These actions could range 

from disapproval of the promotion or assignment to disbanding a unit or organization. Meigs 

had laid his marker down.

Both the Serb and Croat politicians decided to challenge this asserted authority. The natural 
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challengers were the putative commanders in chief of would-be separatist factions, the Croat 

Tri-President Jelavic and the newly elected President of the Republika Srpska, Nikola Poplasen. 

The Serbs postured. The Croats acted. The two militaries seem to have sat out the contest, 

especially on the Serb side, because General Talic, Chief of the General Staff and a Plavsic 

appointee, seemed likely to lose his job without the protection offered by the COMSFOR’s 

policy of no purges. 

The Serb response came in the form of a reply from President Poplasen to the 21 October 

letter from Westendorp and Shinseki. After his succession to the Presidency, Poplasen convened 

a meeting of the RS Supreme Defense Council. The Council consisted of the President, the Serb 

Tri-President, the National Assembly President, the Prime Minister, the Vice President, the 

Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, and the Minister of Internal Affairs. These met at Banja 

Luka on 13 November 1998. They applauded the principles put forward by the two international 

leaders, indeed declared they were the principles on which their own army was already 

governed. But they rejected the external assertion of authority over promotion and assignment, 

basing their arguments on Article 106 of the Serb Constitution that assigned supreme command 

to the President of the Republic [Entity]. The action of the two international leaders was, they 

said, “not influenced by the reasons laid out in the letter and is explicitly contrary to the DPA 

[Dayton Peace Accord] provisions.” Poplasen forwarded this view to Westendorp and Meigs 

on the 14th.

18

Meigs and Westendorp delayed responding to Poplasen over a month, perhaps waiting for 

the Madrid PIC to validate the act. They replied on 23 December 1998 that they were grateful 

for his response and encouraged by this support of the principles intended. But then they said 

simply that he was incorrect in his interpretation of the GFAP and their respective authorities 

thereunder as redefined and interpreted, in the case of the High Representative by the Bonn and 

Madrid PIC declarations. They justified their action as a requirement “to clarify the procedure 

for exercise of civilian command authority over the armed forces.”19 They pointed out that the 

constitutional provisions of the Entities and the state government were not consistent and tied 

duration of the moratorium declared on unsupervised senior officer personnel actions to legal 

resolution of the various positions by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

Amid all this, SFOR was required to detain a sitting corps commander, General Lieutenant 

Colonel Radislav Krstic, for arrest as an indicted war criminal. Krstic was the commander 

of the RS V Corps and was the head of the Entity mine removal effort. As such, he had 

worked frequently with SFOR for some time. In fact, in November Kristic hosted a Joint 

Military Commission meeting at his headquarters. Krstic was the most senior Serb officer to 

be apprehended as a war criminal to that point. He was seized under a sealed indictment.20

President Poplasen’s public response was that Entity contacts with the international community 

would be reduced to a minimum. Such reductions occurred, except to the extent participation 

was directly related to continuation of economic aid or was specifically mandated by Dayton. 

For its part, the leadership of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) was more affronted by the manner 

of apprehension than the act itself, and Meigs toyed with the notion that in the future active 

senior officers might be given the opportunity to surrender to senior SFOR officers rather than 

be snatched on the streets by black-clad “swat” teams. Nothing much came of these musings, 

and General Talic, the Chief of the RS General Staff, was arrested by Austrian police while out 

of the country.

With the declaration of the RS Supreme Defense Council, objections to the requirements 

of Chapter 14 seem to have been dispensed with as a practical matter. Westendorp simply 

announced his decision on the collective civilian command by the Tri-Presidents on 20 February 

1999, preempting any decision of the state Constitutional Court on resolving differences between 

the Entity and national constitutions.21 Following this, on 23 February Poplasen convened 
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another Supreme Defense Council session. The council was reported to have declared that, 

since the court had not yet acted, the Republika Srpska would continue to observe the provisions 

of its constitution until such time as the “executive decision was set.”22 By the 23rd, however, 

Poplasen was deeply involved in a constitutional crisis of his own making. In 10 days, the High 

Representative would dismiss him from his office. Thereafter, there would be a prolonged 

period with no recognized President to contest the issue. Moreover, it did not matter. The 

practical authority of the COMSFOR over the faction armed forces continued to be respected by 

General Talic, whose mandate within the VRS held through very trying days, until he himself 

was arrested as an indicted war criminal in August.

In the Republika Srpska, the issue of civil command did not rise to the level of action, 

principally because Poplasen chose other grounds to resist Dayton. Not so in the Federation. 

There, the matter of General Sopta and the continued concern about the active involvement 

of Croat officers in Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zyednica [HDZ]) politics 

conspired to keep the question on the front burner, at least in SFOR.

When General Shinseki left Bosnia, General Sopta was apparently suspended from office 

and off to Croatia for a senior officers course. On 27 October 1998 a reporter inquired at a 

press conference whether General Sopta had not, in fact, been transferred to the Croatian 

Army.23 There was no answer, just an observation that General Sopta had been removed from 

the Federation Army. COMSFOR had directed that a replacement for Sopta be nominated by 

1 October, but that had not been done. On 6 November General Meigs instructed his CFLO, 

Brigadier Williams, to put to the test the enforceability of the Westendorp-Shinseki Declaration 

(WSD).24 Williams responded with a comprehensive memorandum on the actions necessary to 

get the professionalization program underway in both Entities as well as deal with the Sopta 

(and Rasic) issues. As a result, on 23 November 1998 Meigs signed a letter to Tri-President 

Jelavic reminding him that a nomination for a commander of the Croat 1st Guards Corps was 

due and that under terms of the WSD, COMSFOR would have to review the appointment.25 

Events moved on. On 7 December, Letter of Instruction to the Parties Number 14 (Change 

12) was issued. On 9 December, Miroslav Prce, the acting Federation Minister of Defense, 

nominated Colonel General Zeljko Siljeg, a general deeply involved in HDZ politics and openly 

opposed to Dayton, to be deputy commander of the Federation armed forces, replacing General 

Budimir who was returning to service in Croatia.26 The matter was returned for compliance 

with the requirements of Instruction to the Parties Number 14. On 10 December, General Clark 

replied to a question at a press conference in Sarajevo that Sopta was out of the army in Croatia 

as well as in the Federation. On 15 December the SFOR press spokesman indicated that the 

Professionalization Program was one of two important SFOR issues that would be discussed 

at the Madrid PIC. The other issue was refugee returns. The spokesman indicated that the 

professionalization program had been accepted by the Entity armies.27 Then the matter of 

General Sopta surfaced once again.

On 16 December, while the PIC was meeting in Madrid, General Meigs wrote another letter 

to President Jelavic.28 The letter recited the history of the Sopta affair and revealed that two 1st

(Croat) Guard Corps orders, issued on 29 September and 27 October in the name of General 

Sopta, had come to the attention of COMSFOR. This was characterized by General Meigs as “a 

major breach of faith.” Meigs had, he wrote, directed Major General Pierre Lang (commanding 

Multinational Division-Southeast [MND-SE]) to carry out a comprehensive investigation of the 

1st Guards Corps from the date of Sopta’s relief and to place the corps under a comprehensive 

training and movement ban until a full and satisfactory explanation was given.

Jelavic responded 2 days later, on the 18th.

29 He reported a sense of disbelief in the charges 

and promised to look into the matter at once, acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations. 

He further indicated that he had been assured by Brigadier General Stanko Marin, the acting 
206

commander of the corps, that General Sopta had not acted in the capacity of corps commander 

since the suspension order. Then, on 7 January 2000, Jelavic announced the appointment of new 

general officers without first securing the written imprimatur of the SFOR commander. This 

was a clear act of willful noncompliance.30

Meigs responded with alacrity and force. On Sunday the 10th, there was a special press 

conference to announce that the day before, in response to the act of noncompliance, SFOR 

had seized substantial amounts of Hrvatsko Vijece Odbrane (HVO--Croat faction army) equipment 

and had begun to destroy it.31 Each MND had gone to a Croat weapons storage or electronic 

warfare site and seized equipment.32 COMSFOR, the spokesman said, would meet with Defense 

Minister Miroslav Prce that morning to seek resolution to the impasse. 

SFOR also had called the extraordinary Sunday press conference to address the killing the 

day before by MDN-SE soldiers of a Serb PIFWC, one Dragan Gagovic, during an apprehension 

attempt in the RS town of Foca. This apprehension was particularly important and sensitive. 

It was important because Foca, in MND-SE, had long been a refuge for indicted war criminals 

who openly flouted the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It 

was sensitive because the suspect had small children in the car with him when he attempted 

to evade capture at a roadblock. The children were only shaken up, but a riot ensued in Foca 

during which members of the International Police Task Force (IPTF) were handled roughly. In 

response, SFOR increased its presence in the town. In late February Foca would be the object of 

a sustained increase in SFOR presence designed to make the public flouting of Dayton too risky 

to continue.33

The High Representative immediately backed the SFOR action in response to the Croat 

appointments (and the PIFWC arrest, though privately there were complaints that adequate 

warning was not given the international community). His spokesman said that “the High 

Representative considers the issue of these HVO appointments as a direct challenge to the 

GFAP.” 34 The posture taken with regard to the appointments by the OHR was that Tri-President 

Jelavic had acted deliberately in “an action which he knew to be in contravention of the peace 

agreement.” COMSFOR demanded that the appointments and promotions be suspended and 

the proper process employed to seek approval. The SFOR press spokesman spoke positively 

about the ongoing dialogue between SFOR and the Croat Minister of Defense. However, it was 

made clear that the SFOR position on professionalization was unambiguous and nonnegotiable. 

Interestingly, in light of the still ongoing Sopta saga, it was reported and confirmed that General 

Budimir, the Croat Deputy Commander of the Federation Armed Forces, was transferring to 

the Croatian Army. This, the SFOR spokesman said, was a separate issue. SFOR’s position was 

that the transfer was up to Budimir (and obviously the Croatian government) but he could not 

return to the Federation army in the future, or “exert any control or military authority after that 

point.” 35

On 11 January Minister of Defense Prce wrote to General Meigs. He reported that General 

Sopta was gone from command, had been gone, and was in no way influencing the affairs of 

the 1st Guards Corps. A Colonel Zadro, the assistant personnel officer of the corps, had made 

unauthorized use of Sopta’s signature facsimile. For this, Zadro had been relieved.36 Prce 

also reported, for what it was worth, that “according to the information I have, Mr. Sopta has 

established a status within the Croatian Army and thereby opted for further career development 

in the Republic of Croatia.”37 Prce also issued a statement indicating the Croat faction would 

bow to the will of the international community on the promotion process, pleading plausibly 

that the affair was the result of a misunderstanding of the requirements. 

On 1 February 1999, a revised version of Instruction to the Parties Number 14 (Change 14) 

was issued. There were three notable additions. First, there was a requirement for a written 

declaration of “Commitment to the Peace Process.” The generals had to take the pledge. Then 
207

there was a new “No Double Transfer Policy,” which incorporated the position stated with 

regard to Budimir that the movement from the HVO (Croat faction Army) to the HV (Croatian 

Army) worked only one way. Finally, and most important in the long run, the change announced 

the creation of the Office of Inspector General of the Armed Forces with the mission to oversee 

the provisions of Instruction to the Parties Number 14, first for COMSFOR, then ultimately 

for the SCMM.38 The office was to consist of an American colonel and deputy plus inspectors 

general from the three faction armies. On 19 February General Elie, the Deputy Commander of 

SFOR, approved three of the Croat military nominations that had been submitted with required 

documentation. Elie expressed his expectation that the fourth would be documented within 

days, which it was.39 The High Representative issued his finding on civilian command on the 

20th. While all this was going on, SFOR was also involved in fighting a Croat criminal cartel in 

the southwestern Federation.

There was perhaps no aspect of civil implementation to which General Meigs’ predecessors 

had been more sensitive than the creation of an environment of law and order. Shinseki 

had regarded it as a priority objective, but was loath to have his troops engaged in anything 

smacking of police work. It is thus surprising that one of Meigs’ immediate and most vigorously 

pursued initiatives was systematic and sustained involvement in the efforts of the international 

community to break up the criminal cartels that were a legacy of the war and the collapse of the 

socialist state. This effort was largely an SFOR headquarters initiative, although tactical units 

would be concentrated and given tactical assignments as part of the headquarters program. 

What counted here was the headquarters’ ability to gather and collate information from multiple 

sources, formulate plans, enlist cross-agency cooperation, and coordinate actions. The effort 

was also one that SFOR could not appear to lead, lest that initiative offend the international 

agencies that were assigned primary responsibility for law and order, particularly the Special 

Representative of the Secretary General, the IPTF, and the High Representative himself. It is 

notable, for example, that the Madrid PIC did not mention SFOR as an agency interested in 

fighting crime. In this effort, SFOR would have to be more than it appeared to be.

Like most programs in SFOR, there were precedents established by earlier commanders. 

Indeed, in September 1998, Shinseki had considered and rejected as inadequate an MND-SE 

plan in the very area where Meigs would focus his efforts, the Croat triangle of Mostar, Stolac, 

and Capljina. It had long been evident that there would be no self-sustaining peace, particularly 

in western Bosnia-Herzegovina, until the power of the cartels was broken. Meigs provided 

focus, sustained energy, and a coordinated sequence of actions, directed over time to achieving 

a vital strategic goal. In short, Meigs was conducting operational art, that is, coordinating often 

independent tactical actions in time and space to achieve a broad strategic objective.

To begin with, there was Stolac and the Renner Company. Stolac is a Croat-dominated town 

on the main road that runs parallel to the Bosnia-Croatia border. It dominates routes that lead to 

the Adriatic ports of Ploce and Neum, and it abuts the inter-Entity boundary with southeastern 

Republika Srpska. In short, it occupies a position of great economic and political importance 

to all three factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is in an area of intense separatist passions and, 

together with Drvar in the north, anchors the Croat faction’s pretensions to eventual separation. 

Mixed in population before the war, the area contained only the Croats in 1995.40 Stolac had 

a record of resistance to Dayton as persistent and ruthless as any Serb town in the eastern 

Republika Srpska, and late 1998 proved to be a particularly violent period. Though Stolac had 

accepted an integrated police department with 35 Bosniac and 37 Croat police and station chiefs 

and deputies of mixed background,41 the integration seemed to break down in practice. Dual 

finances and reporting chains remained. 

Violence in Stolac against returning residents began to attract attention in October 1998. 

By then there had been 68 incidents in the year, but without a single useful arrest.42 General 
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Meigs visited the Spanish troops in Stolac on 31 October. Among his comments was a warning: 

“Never pick a fight you cannot win.” On 10 November the international community began 

to take note of the Stolac violence in joint press statements.43 Kelly Moore, spokesman for 

the United Nations Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNMiBH), referred to it as “a culture of 

impunity . . . which is allowed to exist in the present political climate down there.” [Emphasis 

added.] The phrase caught on. Action had been taken earlier in the year, she said--the chief of 

police had been fired and the police force doubled--but in their responses to questions, Moore 

and the SFOR spokesman signaled a certain reluctance for their institutions to become more 

deeply engaged. Routine comments about the responsibility residing with the local police and 

citizens were offered. The absence of executive authority in the international agencies (SFOR 

excepted) was noted. This confusion of purpose was evident also at the Principals Meeting 

two nights later, although there was general agreement that an increased military and police 

presence was called for.44 Still, this sort of coordinated public attention paid to a problem by the 

Principals normally indicated that some kind of action would not be far behind. Paradoxically, 

at the same time Bosnian Croats were resisting returns to Stolac, the spokesman for the United 

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported the first movements of displaced 

Krajina Serbs back into Croatia.45

The usual military response to settle an unstable area was to increase the SFOR presence 

dramatically in terms of number and intrusiveness. Because numerous ridges cut up Bosnian 

terrain, movement is canalized on roads, and movement into and out of most towns can easily 

be interdicted. Checkpoints were set up and cars inspected for weapons and other contraband. 

These actions normally reduced the level of thuggery by the simple expedient of making it 

difficult and risky. Beginning 26 November 1998, the Spanish brigade of MND-SE took this sort 

of aggressive action in the triangle formed by Mostar, Capljina, and Stolac in an operation called 

ESMIRALDA.46 For this action, Major General Lang was reinforced by elements of the MSU 

and the 4th Aviation Brigade, the SFOR operational reserve. Division troops set up roadblocks 

and patrols.

The operation went well until the morning of the 29th, when Mr. Marjan Prce, the Renner 

Company security chief, was stopped at a checkpoint and found in possession of a 9mm pistol. 

Prce’s response was to call in reinforcements on a cellular phone to blockade the checkpoint and 

intimidate SFOR. Around 300 demonstrators showed up rapidly in a coordinated mob action. 

Another crowd surrounded the IPTF station in Stolac and threatened to blow it up. SFOR 

troops intervened to protect the station and internationals. Removing the blockade without 

violence required the combined presence of Major General Lang, Ambassador Ellerkmann, the 

OHR Representative in Mostar, the IPTF Commissioner, and representatives of the Government 

of Canton 7.47 The local police did not arrest Prce. Joint combat camera photographers on the 

scene photographed both demonstrators and Renner Company vehicles. The photographers 

were attacked and some of their cameras seized. Their photographs, however, proved to be an 

operational weapon in the attack on the cartels in Stolac because they permitted identification 

of mob ringleaders and provided a justification for seizure of Renner equipment.

SFOR’s subsequent intentions for Stolac were spelled out at the Principals Meeting on 

the 30th by the DCOMOPS. According to notes taken by Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Razat, a 

military assistant to COMSFOR, Deverell said the commander’s aim was to break “the culture 

of impunity”: to demonstrate force, get the initiative, deter any threat to returnees, isolate the 

people from the hardliners, and support implementation of the rule of law.48 The key requirement 

was acquisition of intelligence. In the meantime, SFOR would press the hardliners through 

confiscation of the assets used in their roadblocks and undertake an information campaign to 

separate the local population from the Renner Company. Deverell indicated that success would 

require a combined effort, particularly in dealing with the local police. The rest of the Principals 
209

responded positively to the notion of a convergent plan of action. In light of subsequent 

developments, Jacques Klein’s observations were most cogent. He “drew the attention of the 

Principals on the need of an independent prosecutor, a judicial system, and special judges to 

compel the government to fulfill its responsibility.”49 (Appointed Special Representative of 

the Secretary General, UN, the following year, Klein would play a significant role in trying to 

establish these.) These requirements would be provided for by judicial legislation imposed by 

Ambassador Westendorp during his last day in office the following summer, after much behindthe-scenes pressure and encouragement. The new laws, all directed against the Federation 

alone, would provide for witness protection, changes of venue, and directed prosecution.50 In 

short, they would provide the beginnings of the legal framework within which Federation law 

enforcement officials could confront organized cantonal lawlessness.

The first sign of this convergence came on 7 December the day before the SFOR surge 

operation concluded, when the IPTF dispatched a 24-person IPTF inspection team to observe the 

Stolac police department. The response in Stolac was a second riot. On 10 December the IPTF 

inspectors were denied access to an area at the local police station. According to the police, the 

area belonged to the Ministry of Defense. SFOR was summoned, entered the area, and found 

contraband, which was confiscated.51 A crowd gathered and, in the words of the UNMiBH 

spokesperson, “The crowd attacked members of the U.N. IPTF at the police station with sticks, 

stormed the police station, and threatened to burn it down, giving IPTF monitors 5 minutes to 

evacuate.”52 General Meigs was reported to have observed that even at Brkco he had not seen 

the appalling behaviors common at Stolac. Among these behaviors was pouring gasoline on 

SFOR soldiers and threatening to light it. The Spanish troops lost control. SFOR evacuated 

the IPTF personnel temporarily to Mostar, who regrettably had given up some of the evidence 

collected at the police station. The Canton Minister of the Interior fired the Stolac chief of police. 

The IPTF team returned and continued its efforts to reform the Stolac police department. The 

situation in Stolac had not been remedied in the first two encounters. But SFOR was opening a 

campaign.

Violence did not stop in Stolac. There were more explosions on Christmas 1998. On 21 

January 1999, the head of the Renner Company, Jozo Peric, was arrested. Peric was charged 

with illegal possession of real estate, illegal construction, illegal trade, prevention of official 

personnel from performing their duties, and possession of weapons and explosives.53 He was 

released on 11 March to the chagrin of the IPTF.54 SFOR intervened, and he was arrested again 

on the one charge that stood, having tax officials beaten at the Renner Market.55

Although public pursuit of the Renner Company shifted to the IPTF, SFOR continued to play 

an important role where it could. At Jacques Klein’s instigation, SFOR provided Air National 

Guard lawyers to the OHR to help in drafting a number of statutes for reforming the judiciary.56

At the same time, Meigs drew on a resource his predecessor had more or less ignored. In April 

1998, General Clark, the SACEUR, had called a senior customs agent with whom he had worked 

when Clark was US Commander in Chief, South (CINCSOUTH), to come from Panama to 

advise him on anticorruption measures that might be used in Bosnia. The customs official, Mr. 

Oscar Vera, attended a SHAPE-sponsored conference hosted by Ambassador Klein. According 

to Vera, the conference produced no new ideas for action. It was clear that there was agreement 

on the threat, but there seemed to be no idea how to confront it.

Vera recognized that the major requirement was good human intelligence that could 

develop evidence of the linkages that tied the various political, military and criminal leaders and 

organizations into a single network. It was the sort of intelligence gathering common to police 

organizations more than armies. Vera went back to Europe in May and spent 6 weeks following 

up the April conference, meeting with the various local players--Bosnian, international, and 

military--as a special assistant to General Clark. Together, they cobbled together a strategy that 
210

combined an attack on the networks with establishment of national border police to control 

the borders. In Stolac that summer, the Renner Company was making a nuisance of itself, 

beating up Federation customs police and preventing SFOR engineers from surveying the 

road on which the open air Renner Market conducted its illegal business. In August 1998, the 

Department of the Treasury agreed to second Mr. Vera to the Department of State’s Bureau of 

International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The Department of State then agreed 

with the Department of Defense that Vera would be assigned as the special adviser to the 

Special Representative of the President and the Secretary of State for Implementation of the 

Dayton Accords (Ambassador Robert Gelbard) and the US CINCEUR (General Clark). 

He will assist CINCEUR in fulfilling his obligations in support of SFOR in coordinating with other 

concerned organizations on defining strategy, planning and implementing joint action programs 

designed to protect and restore customs and other sources of legal revenue to the Government of 

Bosnia-Herzegovina and assist the Special Representative in the implementation of the Dayton 

Accords.57

Vera, whose rank in the Senior Executive Service made him the civil equivalent of a US 

general officer, did not find easy acceptance at SFOR. He was viewed, not entirely without 

cause, as a spy for Clark and Gelbard. The relationship between the COMSFOR and SACEUR 

had become strained by the end of Shinseki’s tour in command. A law enforcement “deputy 

on mission,” or commissar, from Clark was not likely to be welcome in Sarajevo. Also, Vera 

was an adviser to the SACEUR in his role as CINCEUR. In short, he was an American figure 

in an alliance headquarters where national jealousies were easily aroused and where national 

determination not to allow military forces to become involved in law enforcement was a 

continuing sore spot. The Europeans were no more inclined to work the American agenda 

(as opposed to the NATO agenda) through SFOR, than the Americans were inclined to work 

the European agenda. Finally, it seems that Mr. Vera caused some friction in the intelligence 

structure at SFOR. Vera sensed that he would get no support from Shinseki but could only bide 

his time until Meigs took command and try again.58

Meigs was more inclined to take advantage of what Mr. Vera had to offer, although he was 

no less suspicious of his professional loyalties. Meigs was altogether prepared to take on the 

Croat mafia, insisting to his allies that he was not involved in anticrime activity, which was the 

responsibility of the IPTF and the High Representative, but that he was attacking the criminalmilitary linkages addressed in his campaign plan. This provided a fairly narrow path on which 

to maneuver, taking direct action where he might under the authority of Annex 1A to guarantee 

a safe and secure environment and providing support to civil implementation where he could 

find the national will to do so among the participating nations. Meigs was quite willing to 

stimulate the request for support from those responsible for civil implementation if he saw an 

opportunity before the IPTF or High Representative.

Meigs gave Vera an office in his headquarters in a closed room that could be entered only 

through the unused shower room next to the commander’s conference room. Apparently, 

Meigs and Vera arrived at an understanding about Vera’s direct communications with Clark 

and Gelbard. In any event, Vera was kept more or less isolated from the SFOR staff, but he was 

permitted to act as Meigs’ special adviser. He was assigned a succession of military intelligence 

officers to assist him. He operated out of Meigs’ office in the headquarters and proved to be a 

tireless and effective promoter of common endeavors by the various interested agencies of the 

international community, particularly the OHR, IPTF, and SFOR. Essentially, he made himself 

a vital internal communications node and information clearinghouse for the international 

community, keeping each agency aware of what the others were doing and identifying 
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opportunities for common action when they appeared. These he would often engineer himself, 

and he would facilitate their execution on the ground, working through the inevitable friction 

of ownership and primacy of interest. All the while, he was working to exploit various sources 

of information to build a map of the criminal networks that dominated the hidden second level 

of Bosnian politics. 

Meigs’ efforts with Vera were aided by the separate activities of a British colonel, Hector 

Gullan, who took a special and very personal interest in pursuing Croat war criminals from 

the Stolac-Mostar area, an outgrowth of earlier service under United Nations Protection Force 

(UNPROFOR).59 Gullan and Vera did not trust each other very much, but Gullan and General 

Meigs seemed to click, displaying the mutual attraction of “two hunters” according to one of 

Oscar Vera’s Army assistants, Lieutenant Colonel David Anderson.60 The efforts were also 

aided significantly by a new SFOR CJ2, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Caniano. General Meigs brought 

in Caniano in December 1998 when Meigs dismissed the incumbent, a US full colonel, thus 

underscoring the central role he expected intelligence to play in his campaign plan. Meigs 

wanted nothing less than the reordering of the intelligence structure to emphasize the collecting 

of useful human intelligence, something of a disappearing skill in the US intelligence community. 

The culmination of Meigs’ and Oscar Vera’s hard and complex work would come at the end of 

Meigs’ year in command of SFOR. In September and October 1999, they would exploit the fruit 

of the year’s patient and guarded effort, an effort that often required investing much energy in 

smoothing over bureaucratic sensitivities and territoriality.

The mechanism for providing oversight of the international efforts to reconstruct BosniaHerzegovina in the Western democratic and free-market form was the annual PIC meeting, 

chaired by the High Representative. By 1998, Westendorp was fairly adept at advanced 

coordination of a position to take to the PIC with both internationals and Entity players. In 

October he sent his program to his countryman, Javier Solana, asking his assistance in enlisting 

the support of the North Atlantic Council (NAC). Westendorp acknowledged that SFOR had 

performed an essential function in implementing the peace accords. “Indeed,” he wrote, “in 

many respects it is the rock upon which Dayton is built, and I shall continue to depend upon it 

heavily if my programme of work is to succeed.” He went on, however, to restate an argument 

he had made in his remarks to the NAC earlier that month, remarks that some took as a veiled 

shot at his departing military colleague, General Shinseki. Westendorp began by indicating an 

interest not just in the size of SFOR but in its “composition and profile.” 

The recent addition of the MSU to the ranks of SFOR provides for considerable extra flexibility, 

and I would very much welcome additional forces with similar capabilities. I would also welcome 

any steps that can be taken to adopt a less overtly defensive posture, one which is perhaps more 

sympathetic to the very different circumstances that now exist. The benefits of such an approach 

are very evident in those areas where it is already being adopted.61

It is not known what response, if any, this drew from Solana. The comments appear to reflect 

the view in the OHR that what was needed in Bosnia by 1998 was less a traditional military force 

than a more aggressive, armed, paramilitary police, an aspect of the view Klein had expressed 

after the Drvar riot. Of course, it would be easy for the NAC to take note of that view and decide 

that, if it were valid, they might as well reduce the purely military force without necessarily 

increasing the paramilitaries.

Westendorp also had become skilled in using the PIC to consolidate his own position within 

the mixed body known as the Principals.62 At Madrid, for example, he gained reaffirmation of 

the powers granted at Bonn and explicit recognition that he was “the senior representative of 

the international community in BiH,” and that he was thus authorized to coordinate directly 
212

with other international bodies, inside and outside of Bosnia.63 This, of course, legitimized 

his negotiations with the neighboring states’ political leaders and his going over the SFOR 

commander’s head to the Secretary General of NATO on occasion. Madrid granted the High 

Representative new authority over the leadership of the various political parties in BosniaHerzegovina. A provision was adopted that prevented any officeholders dismissed by the 

High Representative from transferring their seats of power to positions of leadership in party 

organizations, a frequent dodge for dismissed officials.64

Typically, the PIC acknowledged the importance of the role played by SFOR, although only 

after SFOR worked to get such language adopted in the PIC report.65 It emphasized the priority 

to be given refugee returns in 1999 and the importance attached to creating a state dimension 

of defense, and it observed that “the growth of organized crime also represents a serious threat 

to BiH, and is completely incompatible with BiH’s integration into Europe.”66 The Madrid 

PIC also set a date for creating a state border service, first to control the state borders, then 

perhaps to undertake roles normally performed by a state central investigative service, another 

international effort to shore up the weak central government.67

Still, the Madrid program, which was far more extensive than those few issues indicated, 

should not be seen so much as an order passed down by a higher headquarters as the validation 

of a program sent up by the High Representative with participation by the other agents involved 

in the day-to-day rebuilding of Bosnia-Herzegovina.68 Oversight by the collective organ was 

general, and the key PIC national actors could still support their own hobby horses by targeting 

resources on favored programs or setting limits on action of particular bodies by going over 

their heads. The PIC report did become a basic document for international actors in Bosnia to 

justify their choices or actions, as we have seen SFOR and the High Representative do regarding 

general officer professionalization.

One Madrid PIC provision addressed the need for final demarcation of Bosnia’s borders.69

This was a problem principally because of border disputes involving neighboring countries 

(Croatia and the FRY) that did not recognize the boundaries of former Yugoslavian Bosnia 

as legitimate, or did not recognize the authority of the High Representative in settling such 

disputes. The problem appears to have been further confused by the maps used at the Dayton 

peace conference. Unfortunately, the Inter-Entity Boundary was the one that got most of the 

attention at Dayton. The external boundaries required patient arbitration. One practical and 

irritating case involved Martin Brod, a town on the Croatian border. 

Martin Brod had been a Serb enclave before the war. In 1998, Bosniac police from Federation 

Canton 1 policed the Bosnian side of the town, although it was in the territorial domain of Croatdominated Canton 10. In the case of Martin Brod, three possible borders were at issue: a prewar 

Yugoslavian provincial border, an Austrian Empire border, and a so-called international border. 

The town was geographically divided in varying degrees by each. Croatia sent police into the 

town to the limits of what it claimed as its territory. In August, Croatian police interfered with 

returnees attempting to get back to their homes. This was the key issue with the international 

community. No local (Bosnian) resistance could be expected, and neither the Federation nor 

the Bosnian State Government had the means to act, although President Izetbegovic could and 

did throw a wrench into the diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute by not cooperating. The 

international community tried to resolve the disagreement by means of a border commission, 

and the Croatian police stopped interfering with returns.70 Indeed, in General Meigs’ view the 

police stopped doing much of anything but being there. 

The matter would likely have been resolved by negotiation, as most such issues were, but 

the two old adversaries, Tudjman and Izetbegovic, became stubborn. Tudjman especially made 

the fatal error on 14 December 1998 of threatening action against SFOR troops on the Bosnian 

border. The US responded with a stinging rebuke,71 and SFOR prepared to evict the three 
213

“drunk policemen.”72 Westendorp sent a formal request to General Meigs on 20 December 

pointing to the passage of a deadline he had set in correspondence with Tudjman on 13 and 

27 November.73 Canadian troops under command of MND-SW removed the Croatian police 

without incident on 23 December.74 Tudjman exploded before his cabinet about the failure to 

defend sacred Croatian soil, but no action followed.75 Much larger problems loomed for the 

international community in the new year, particularly in the Republika Srpska.

Had it not been for the NATO air war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that was 

to start less than 20 days later, 5 March 1999 would likely have been remembered as the black 

day of the Republika Srpska. It may still be for having the greatest lasting effect. On that day, 

the High Representative dismissed, in the name of democracy, the popularly elected president 

of the republic, Nikola Poplasen. The same day, the international arbitrator, American lawyer 

Roberts Owen, who was appointed subsequent to Dayton, ruled that Brcko would not belong 

to either the Republic or Federation, but instead would be held in common and governed by 

neither, effectively creating thereby a third entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina and dividing the two 

parts of the Republika Srpska in the middle.

Nikola Poplasen, the head of the Srpska Radikalna Stranka (SRS) party, was elected President 

of the Republika Srpska in September 1998. He took office on 4 November. The SRS had strong 

ties to deputy FRY prime minister Vojislav Seselj, who made himself so unpleasant on a visit 

to support President Poplasen that Ambassador Klein, on behalf of the High Representative, 

declared him persona non grata in Bosnia-Herzegovina on 13 November 1998 and ordered him 

to leave the country. SFOR acted as the bailiff. The command gave the order for his removal and 

escorted him from the country, all in about 10 hours following receipt of order by MND-SW). 

The operation was no small affair. SFOR employed significant military assets from MND-SW 

through MND-N all the way to the border.Coordinating this action in quick time demonstrated 

no small operational grip on the part of the theater headquarters.76

Poplasen seems to have made his principal objective the unseating of RS Prime Minister 

Dodik and the break up of the SLOGA (Unity) political alliance that elected Dodik and maintained 

support for him throughout the crisis. Ten days after taking office, Poplasen nominated Dragan 

Kalinic of the Srpska Demokratska Stranka (SDS) to be prime minister, but Kalinic could not 

command a parliamentary majority. On 31 December Poplasen nominated Brane Miljus of 

the Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata (SNSD--Independent Social Democrats). He, too, failed 

to command a majority. On 3 February 1999, Poplasen nominated National Assembly Speaker 

Petar Djokic (Socijalisticka Partija Republika Srpski--SPRS--Socialist Party) as prime minister. 

Djokic’s party was part of the SLOGA coalition that supported Dodik, and Dodik’s support 

(including that from Djokic) apparently remained firm enough to lead Poplasen to a rash act. 

On 3 March, prompted by 26 members (a minority) of the National Assembly and acting, he 

said, under the RS Constitution, President Poplasen announced the dismissal of Dodik, who had 

been serving throughout as a caretaker prime minister. Poplasen then proposed to call for new 

elections. This was too much for the international community. 

Westendorp replied, invoking the authority of the Venice Commission once again, that 

Dodik could not be dismissed and insisted that the article quoted addressed vacancies in office, 

not dismissal of caretakers.77 He indicated that the Organization for Security and Cooperation 

in Europe (OSCE) would not permit new elections and that, under his authority from Annex 10 

of the GFAP and Article 15.35(d) of the Provisional Election Commission rules, he would apply 

sanctions against Poplasen if the latter continued with “his frivolous and anti-constitutional 

actions.” Sanctions, he warned darkly, could involve removal from office. SFOR Chief of Staff 

Major General Karl-Heinz Lather appeared at the joint press conference on 4 March to lend 

SFOR’s support to the High Representative and to warn the Vojska Republica Srpska (VRS--RS 

Army) to remain professionally detached and act responsibly.78 
214

The VRS was off balance just then anyway. Lather also announced that investigation 

following a MND-N weapons seizure in Bijeljina on 26 February had revealed that three brigade 

commanders of the VRS’s III Corps had been implicated in an illegal weapons trafficking 

scheme.79 Lather reported that the VRS high command was cooperating with the investigation 

into the weapons smuggling, and that the new DCOMOPS, Lieutenant General Michael 

Willcocks, who had just arrived, would discuss these matters with General Talic.80 MND 

commanders also would meet that day with their counterparts to deliver the same endorsement 

of responsible action. 

Two issues were involved here: the matter of weapons not accounted for under Dayton and 

the fact that the weapons seized included SA-7 missiles. With the escalating tensions in Kosovo, 

SFOR was particularly sensitive to control over air defense systems, especially since declared SA7s were already supposed to be separated from their firing components by previous agreement. 

As a result, SFOR undertook another intensive inventory plus an investigation reaching into the 

headquarters of the RS air defense center in Banja Luka.81 Although the military response was 

immediate and sure, the Entity criminal investigation lagged on through the summer of 1999. 

On 11 August General Willcocks wrote to Minister of the Interior Novik, complaining about 

the general lack of attention to the investigation of the civilian trucking and warehouse firms 

implicated with the military figures in what was obviously a wider smuggling scheme.82 Foot 

dragging in such matters was characteristic, saying something about the difficulty involved 

in the Western efforts to encourage and lead the Bosnian governing class to behave like good 

social democrats.

On 5 March High Representative Carlos Westendorp dismissed President Nikola Poplasen 

from office. Poplasen had been president just 4 months. In his public statement, Westendorp 

laid down a detailed bill of particulars and a compelling justification for his actions.83 The 

presidential crisis actually proved to be the lesser event on 5 March. The Republika Srpska

would continue to be governed without a president, adequately it seems, for months to come. 

The vice-president declined to accept the higher office, although he was willing to act as a 

substitute in some limited respects. It suited the international community to accept that state 

of affairs. Prime Minister Dodik compiled a respectable record of legislation notwithstanding. 

The Republika Srpska seemed to get along just as well. The larger blow was the loss of Brcko, 

including the portion of the corridor held by the Serbs at the end of the war, because of an 

arbitration decision. 

The significance of Brcko has already been explained in previous chapters. At Dayton, control 

over the area was put aside for arbitration precisely because it was an issue so sensitive that no 

resolution could be hoped for, and it was the one issue upon which all agreed hopes for peace 

might flounder.84 A decision was called for within a year.85 The continued sensitivity of the 

question to both Entities forced postponing a final decision and appointment of an international 

administrator, US Ambassador Robert Farrand, nominally a deputy of the High Representative. 

Farrand had effectively ruled Brcko since 1997 with an authority greater than that of the High 

Representative over Bosnia. In 1998, the bill on Brcko was finally due. The decision was a 

wonder of Solomonic reason. What the arbitrator did was deny both Entities’ claims to the 

area. He ordered the two sections of the prewar Brcko municipality, occupied since 1995 by 

each Entity, rejoined into a newly created institution. This was not a third entity, he said, but a 

“condominium,” which both Entities would own simultaneously but neither would govern. A 

multiethnic district government would be formed under “intensified international supervision 

and beyond the control of either entity.” The district was to be demilitarized by all sides. In 

an attempt to assuage the Serbs’ worst fears, the settlement guaranteed freedom of movement 

and military transit “under SFOR regulation.” Thus, Owen’s announcement asserted, “The 

territorial continuity of the RS will be ensured.”86
215

Anticipating reaction against Prime Minister Dodik, Owen said that but for Dodik’s efforts 

to comply with Dayton, he (Owen) would have awarded the entire area to the Federation. 

Moreover, to guarantee the settlement, it was qualified as follows: “if one party seriously 

obstructs implementation, the [arbitration] Tribunal will retain authority to place the District 

under the exclusive control of the entity that is complying.” It was, indeed, a marvelous 

resolution of a problem without a solution that deserves future study as a classic arbitration. 

Prime Minister Dodik announced his resignation. The international community held its 

breath and fell in as a solid front behind both Westendorp’s and Owen’s decisions. Carlos 

Westendorp and General Meigs appeared together at a joint news conference in Sarajevo to 

address both incidents and urge calm.87 Javier Solana issued an announcement of NATO’s full 

support of both actions.88 Following the press conference, Meigs and Westendorp met with the 

Serb political leadership--Dodik, Djokic, Radisic, Novic, and Poplasen--to put the best possible 

face on the decision and encourage them to see it as an opportunity to move forward. 

There was some local unrest. SFOR increased its presence in Brcko. There was an incident 

in the town of Ugljevik in which four SFOR soldiers, eating at a local pizza restaurant, were 

attacked. Four Serb toughs confronted them in the restaurant and struck their table with 

nightsticks, breaking glass. As the soldiers exited the restaurant hugging the wall, the thugs 

shoved and punched them. Outside the restaurant, a larger group of about 10 thugs confronted 

them. One struck the senior sergeant again from behind with a nightstick. The sergeant drew 

his weapon and turned about. The assailant had his nightstick raised for another blow. The 

sergeant shot his attacker twice, killing him. As it happened, the dead man was from the town 

of Lopare, where he was vice president of the SRS. He and his associates were apparently in 

Ugljevik to cause trouble.89 After initial press reports that SFOR had murdered a Serb walking 

harmlessly in the street were countered by provision of the details at a press conference, the Serb 

response was relatively peaceful, and the RS police maintained reasonably good order.90

Over in the west in an unrelated incident, on the morning of 16 March, Deputy Federation 

Interior Minister Jozo Leutar, a Croat, was injured in a car bomb explosion. Leutar was well 

respected by the international community for his active support of anticorruption and anticrime 

measures, and there was some suspicion that Croat criminals might have attacked him. The 

Croat political structure immediately attempted to exploit the incident to drive a wedge into 

Federation unity. Walkouts and lockouts occurred in a number of mixed faction police forces. 

The Chef de Cabinet of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton’s Ministry of the Interior organized a 

demonstration by the canton’s police. At his summons, they converged on Mostar and drove 

about honking horns and threatening Bosniacs at the boundary between East and West Mostar.91

The international community supported the criminal investigation with Federal Bureau of 

Investigation (FBI) and MSU investigators, but no arrests were forthcoming.92 (Arrests were 

made only in September 2000, growing largely out of Jacques Klein’s doggedness, Tudjman’s 

death, and the fall of the Croatian HDZ in subsequent Croatian elections.93) Leutar eventually 

died as a result of his wounds. Meigs tried to get Bosniac President Izetbegovic to visit the 

family or at least issue a significant statement of regret. The Bosniac leader would not. Meigs 

visited the family to extend SFOR’s condolences and regrets.

In the Republika Srpska on 15 March, Vice President Mirko Sarovic nominated Mr. Mladen 

Ivanic (Partija Drustvenog Progresa [PDP]--Party for Democratic Progress) to be prime minister. 

The High Representative refused to recognize the nomination unless Sarovic declared himself 

president. Sarovic refused to adopt the formula demanded, so Ivanic, once former President 

Plavsic’s first nominee to be Prime Minister, again was denied the office. Prime Minister Dodik 

withdrew his resignation the same day, possibly to avoid his office legitimately being declared 

vacant.

In an interview on the eve of the war in Kosovo, General Meigs went to some lengths to 
216

reassure television viewers that SFOR actions in Bosnia indicated no danger or escalation on 

the part of the international community. Under questioning, he addressed the still ongoing 

investigation of SA-7 holdings, the arrest of General Kristic, the death of Mr. Gagovic, and 

the use of sealed indictments that remained a sensitive point in the Republika Srpska. Meigs 

insisted that the SFOR mandate had not changed, but that recent developments reflected rather 

differences in the situation on the ground. In one of his clearest public explanations of his 

program of professionalization, he said:

What has risen to the surface as the real threat to peace and the threat to accomplishing the 

Dayton vision is this linkage between criminal structures, certain institutions in the police and 

paramilitary organizations, and the military. So what SFOR has now begun doing, in addition 

to maintaining a secure environment supporting the IC, is focused on professionalization of the 

military and removing them from this complex.

“This,” he concluded, “is an example of how the mandate has stayed the same but things 

that we’ve had to do to accomplish the mandate have developed.”94 In response to questions, he 

discussed the problems of returns and the continued occupation of some television transmitters 

and pointed to the ultimately successful attempt on Jozo Leutar’s life as evidence that, for 

all the progress made, SFOR’s presence was still necessary. He finished by emphasizing the 

separation between SFOR, with its clear Dayton mandate, and other pending actions by NATO 

forces in Kosovo. That same day, he reassured the acting head of the OSCE mission that with 

regard to Kosovo, 

my intent is to continue to ensure compliance with the GFAP while isolating BiH, especially the 

Serb and the Bosniac populace, from the crisis in Kosovo and to defeat the potential negative 

impact of the international community’s pressure on FRY.95

Meigs assured Ambassador Klingler that he was confident in the ability and will of the local 

police forces, supervised by the IPTF, to continue to maintain order. By and large, this faith was 

not misplaced, notwithstanding the outbreak of war between NATO and the former Republic 

of Yugoslavia on 24 March 1999.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 9

1. Office of the High Representative, Document, Declaration of the Peace Implementation Council, Madrid, 16 

December 1998, and Annex: The Peace Implementation Agenda; Reinforcing Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina--The Way 

Ahead, Madrid, 16 December 1998. Available on line at http://www.ohr.int/docu/d981216b.htm and http://www.ohr.int/

docu/d981216a.htm.

2. Office of the High Representative, Document, Brcko Arbitration; Statement by Roberts B. Owen, Presiding 

Arbitrator for the Brcko Arbitral Tribunal, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 5 March 1999. Available on line at http:

//www.ohr.int/docu/d990305a.htm

3. General Meigs discussed his understanding of the requirements of NATO command in an interview with 

Mr. Bruno Lezzi, a reporter from the Swiss Neue Zuericher Zeitung, at SFOR Headquarters on 2 February 1999. HQ 

SFOR, Public Affairs Office, Transcript, COMSFOR General Montgomery C. Meigs, Live Interview with Mr. Bruno 

Lezzi, SFOR Headquarters, 2 February 1999. (Hereinafter, Lezzi Interview.)

4. Ibid. Meigs discussed this priority herein.
217

5. In NATO intelligence and some special operations work (notwithstanding combined special operations 

command arrangements) tended to be national functions. Logistics is as well, though bilateral agreements muddy 

the water there.

6. Different nations vested that prerogative in different officials. Some, France for example, vested the 

authority in the senior national officer in theater, in the case of France, the DCOM. Britain and Germany vested 

it in the senior commander of their forces in the field, who was always junior in rank to the DCOM-OPS and 

Chief of Staff. In the case of the US, Generals Crouch, Shinseki, and Meigs were also CG USAREUR. This gave 

them additional authority Admiral Smith had not enjoyed with IFOR, though the SACEUR was their U.S. Theater 

Commander as well as their NATO Chief, and that sometimes trumped their hand. When forces in the Balkans 

were provided by CG Forces Command, certain authorities and responsibilities were retained by their parent 

commands in CONUS.

7. Meigs as quoted in Lezzi Interview.

8. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to General Maurice Baril, Chief of Defense Staff, 

Canada, dated 23 December 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, 

CG (Meigs) Signature Files. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to General Wesley K. Clark, 

SACEUR, dated November 17, 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, 

COM LOG 1998, November.

9. DRAFT Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to Colonel L. Leso, Commander 

Multinational Specialized Unit, dated 7 November 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative 

Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, November. See also his comments on the importance of force in the Lezzi 

Interview.

10. Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, and General Eric Shinseki, COMSFOR, addressed 

to the three Tri-Presidents, the President, President Elect, Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of the Republika 

Srpska, and the President, Prime Minister, and Acting Minister of Defense of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 

dated October 21, 1998. Letter is an enclosure to HQ SFOR, Chief Faction Liaison Office Memorandum, dated 7 

November 98, [SUBJECT] WESTENDORP-SHINSEKI DECLARATION--PROPOSED NEXT STEPS, in HQ SFOR, 

Office of the Commander, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, November.

11. In the case of the Federation, where the issues seem to have been most prominent, in a Provisional Election 

Commission Decision of 8 July 1998. See letter from Ambassador Robert L. Barry, Chairman, Provisional Election 

Commission, to Mr. Ante Jelavic, President of the HDZ Party, dated 11 October 1999 (Covered by OSCE Memo 

dated 11 October 1999), in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, 

October.

12. Ibid.

13. The 21 October letter speaks of a duty “to ensure the continuation of a secure environment.” COMSFOR asserted 

an authority under Annex 1A “to do all that he judges necessary and proper to carry out his responsibilities in support of 

the GFAP.” In fact, 1A is not quite all-encompassing. The responsibilities are enumerated. The one authority that 

this mandate seems to hang on is paragraph 3 of Article VI, of Annex 1A: “to help create secure conditions for the 

conduct by others of other tasks associated with the peace settlement, including free and fair elections.”

14. HQ, SFOR, Instructions to the Parties, Change 12 to ITP, Chapter 14, “Entity Armed Forces in a Democratic 

Society; Ethics and Professionalization,” in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Section Notebook, 

COM LOG 1998, December.

15. HQ, SFOR, Instructions to the Parties, Change 14 to ITP, Chapter 14, “Entity Armed Forces in a Democratic 

Society; Ethics and Professionalization.” Provided to author by Chief, Foreign Liaison Office, March 1999. See 

Brigadier Roy Wilde’s discussion of the Instruction in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 4 February 1999, 

1131 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

16. Change 12 to ITP, Chapter 14, 14-1.
218

17. This concern was reflected in comments by Clark and Secretary General Solana when they came to Sarajevo 

just before the Madrid PIC, and in the program of the conference itself. See para 13 of Declaration of the Peace 

Implementation Council, Madrid, 16 December 1998, p. 5; and General Clark’s comments in HQ SFOR, Transcript, 

Joint Press Conference; NATO Secretary General Dr. Javier Solana, High Representative Ambassador Carlos Westendorp, 

SACEUR Gen. Wesley Clark, 10 December 1998, 1506 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

18. Letter from Nickola Poplasen, The President, Republika Srpska, to H.E. Carlos Westendorp, The High 

Representative, and General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, dated 14 November 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of 

the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, December. See also reply from the Standing 

Committee on Military Matters (undated but prepared prior to 9 December) that also agreed with the principles 

while challenging the legal basis of the action. Reply is an enclosure to letter from Gianni La Ferrar, Legal Advisor 

to OHR, to COL Michael Neveu, SFOR LEGAD, Fax No. 146-68 54, dated 9 December 1998, in HQ USAREUR, 

History Office, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Miscellaneous Records.

19. Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, and General Montgomery C. Meigs, Commander 

SFOR, to the Honorable Nikola Poplasen, President Republika Srpska, dated 23 December 1998, from HQ SFOR, 

Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, CG (Meigs) Signature File.

20. On hosting JMC, see comments of Lt. Cdr. Sheena Thomson, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press 

Conference, 17 November 1998, 1139 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks. On arrest see 

comments of Lt. Cdr. Sheena Thomson, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 3 December 1998, 1141 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks

21. Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, to the Tri-Presidents, dated 20 February 1999, in HQ 

SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, February. Meigs’ files also 

contain a letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, to General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, dated 

28 January that includes a version of the decision (it is not clear that it is the final one) and a request for comment by 

Meigs by 2 February. This letter is in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM 

LOG 1998, January. No record of a response was found in the COM’s files. This version of the decision asserts that 

collective decisions on matters of Civilian Command can be taken by a simple majority of the Tri-Presidents, rather 

than by consensus only. The public policy declaration is also available on line at Office of the High Representative, 

Press Release, Decision on Civilian Command of the Armed Forces, Sarajevo, 20 February 1999. Available on line at http:

//www.ohr.int/press/p990220a.htm. 

22. Translation of article, “Commanding of the Army According to the Constitution,” in Glas Srpski, 23 February 

1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, Mar.

23. Question from Antonio Prlenda, Oslobodjenje, in HQ SFOR, Transcript, Joint Press Conference, 27 October 

1998, 1135 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

24. Meigs quoted in WESTENDORP-SHINSEKI DECLARATION--PROPOSED NEXT STEPS. This memo 

provides a good summary of the Sopta issues to November 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, 

Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, November.

25. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to President Ante Jelavic, Member of the Presidency 

of Bosnia-Herzegovina, dated November 23, 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, 

Notebook, CG (Meigs) Signature Files.

26. Letter from Miroslave Prce, Acting Minister of Defense Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Federal 

Ministry of Defense, to General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, dated 9 December 1998 in HQ SFOR, Office of 

the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COMLOG 1998, December.

27. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 15 December 

1998, 1141 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

28. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to President Ante Jelavic, Member of the Presidency 
219

of Bosnia-Herzegovina, dated 16 December 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, 

Notebook, CG (Meigs) Signature Files.

29. Letter from Ante Jelavic, BIH PRESIDENCY MEMBER dated 18 November 1998, in HQ SFOR, Office of the 

Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, December.

30. General Meigs’ conclusion based on a subsequent phone call with President Jelavic. (General Meigs, note 

to the author.)

31. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 10 January 

1999, 1400 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

32. Note from General Meigs to author.

33. Comments by Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 23 February 

1999, 1135 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

34. Comments of Simon Haselock (OHR), Ibid.

35. Comments by Lt. Cdr. Chamberlain, SFOR, Ibid.

36. Letter from Federation Minister of Defense, Miroslav Prce, to COMSFOR, dated 11 January 1999, in HQ 

SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, January.

37. Ibid.

38. Annex A to Chapter 14, “Entity Armed Forces in a Democratic Society, Office of the Inspector Generals of 

the Army Forces,” in HQs, SFOR, Instructions to the Parties, Change 14 to ITP, Chapter 14, “Entity Armed Forces in 

a Democratic Society; Ethics and Professionalization.”

39. Letter from Lieutenant General Bruno Elie, Deputy Commander, SFOR, to Mr. Miroslav Prce, Federal 

Ministry of Defense, [SUBJECT] ACCEPTANCE OF GENERAL OFFICER NOMINATIONS, dated 19 February 

1999, copy attached to Memorandum for COMSFOR from Brig R.M. Wilde, CFLO, [SUBJECT] LIFTING THE 

T & M BAN ON 1ST GUARDS CORPS [no date, probably 23 February] in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, 

Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, Feb.

40. Comments by Ariane Quentier, UNHCR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 1 December 1998, 

1147 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

41. Comments of Kelly Moore, UNMIBH, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 27 October 1998, 1135 

hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

42. Comments by Alexandra Stiglmayer, OHR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 10 November 

1998, 1140 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

43. Comments of Alexandra Sitglmayer, OHR, Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR, Ariane Quentier, UNHCR, 

and Kelly Moore, UNMIBH, Ibid.

44. Memorandum, Subject: Notes of the Principals Meeting 12 November 1998, in HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, SFOR, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, November 1998. 

[Author not indicated.]

45. Comments of Ariane Quentier, UNHCR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 10 November 1998, 

1140 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

46. Comments by Lt. Cdr. Glenn Chamberlain, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 1 

December 1998, 1147 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks. A summary of the SFOR operation 
220

is also in Memorandum, Subject: Notes of the Principals Meeting Monday, 30 November 1998, in HQ USAREUR, 

Commander’s Initiatives Group, Notebook, SFOR, Stabilization Force Commander’s Journal, November 1998. Notes 

transcribed by Pierre Razat, LTC French Army, COM MA. 

47. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 1 December 1998, 1147 hours, Coalition Press Information Center, 

Tito Barracks.

48. Notes of the Principals Meeting, Monday, 30 November 1998.

49. Ibid.

50. Particularly The Law on Amendments to the Law on the Supreme Court of the Federation, the Law on the 

Federation Prosecutor’s Office, and the Law on Special Witness Identity Protection in Criminal Proceedings in 

the Federation. See Office of the High Representative, Press Release, Decisions Furthering the Implementation of the 

Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 31 July 1999. Available on line at http:// www.ohr.int/

press/p990731a.htm. COL James M. Coyne, the SFOR LEGAD, wrote an analysis for the SFOR leadership. It is in 

MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: Office of the High Representative Decisions, dated 30 July 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office 

of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, August.

51. According to the report of the International Crisis Group, referencing an IPTF Report, the material provided 

evidence of intelligence gathering by a shadow Canton Ministry of Defense. International Crisis Group Report, Is 

Dayton Failing? Bosnia Four Years After The Peace Agreement. ICG Balkans Report No. 80, Sarajevo, 28 October 1999, 

page 46. 

52. Comments by Kelly Moore, UNMIBH, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 December 1998, 1143 

hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

53. Comments by Kelly Moore, UNMIBH in, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 21 January 1999, 1145 

hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

54. Comments by Kelly Moore, UNMIBH, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 March 1999, 1148 

hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks. 

55. The Renner Market was a stretch of road on which various black market operations worked on weekends. 

It was one of the roadside markets that sprang up at the end of the war, sometimes with IFOR assistance, as a 

substitute for a working economy. Once peace arrived, the existence of these markets deprived the state of tax 

revenues and became venues for various forms of lawlessness. On intervention by SFOR, note from General Meigs 

to author.

56. Ambassador Klein was, it is to be recalled, an Air Force Reserve Major General.

57. Departments of State and Defense, MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES 

DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Special Representative of the President and the Secretary of State for Implementation 

of the Dayton Accords and OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, Signed by Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard 

(dated 28 August 1998) and Berrid McConnell, Director Bosnia Task Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense (13 

August 1998), in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1998, Sep.

58. Based on dialogue with Mr. Vera.

59. Gullan was the subject of a Danish Television documentary Operation PANTER (PANTHER), produced by 

Nordisk Film TV for TV 2/DANMARK. Copy of film placed with Swain papers in USAREUR History Office.
221

CHAPTER 10

WAR IN THE BALKANS AND AFTERMATH

On 23 March 1990, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

ordered the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), to initiate military actions 

against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). When air operations began the following 

day, the Commander, Stabilization Force (COMSFOR), closed Bosnian airspace to commercial 

traffic. He instituted a training and movement ban on all faction armed forces, the former as 

a precautionary measure, the latter to reassure the three factions that their opposite numbers 

would remain in barracks.1 Stabilization Force (SFOR) divisions intensified their surveillance of 

the common borders with FRY and updated their evacuation plans for international civilians. 

The personal actions of the SFOR commander and his principal deputies are indicative of the 

NATO military’s place in the Bosnian political landscape. On the first day of the war, there 

was a sort of natural division of responsibility in the headquarters. COMSFOR focused on 

reassuring the international community. The Deputy Commander for Operations (DCOMOPS) 

did the same for the faction armies.2 The senior Contact Group general officers were employed 

especially to calm their countrymen in the diplomatic community.

A critical problem to be addressed at once within SFOR was to confirm the situation regarding 

the Russian forces in Multinational Division-North (MND-N). Russia objected to the US-led 

NATO bombing campaign for which UN Security Council permission had not been deemed 

necessary. The Russians broached various possible alternative formulas for continued Russian 

participation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. General Meigs was firm. The Russians would remain 

under the old mandate, that is, under the tactical command of the commander of MND-N, or 

they would be required to leave Bosnia altogether. They stayed and continued to perform their 

duties as before. The chair of SACEUR’s Russian deputy commander at Supreme Headquarters, 

Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE), became vacant. President Yeltsin withdrew the incumbent, 

General Viktor Zavarin, on 24 March in response to the NATO bombing. A new and senior 

Russian general, General Lieutenant Yepitanov, appeared at the headquarters of the Russian 

brigade in MND-N. This proved inconvenient to the local command arrangements. In May, 

General Elie’s successor, Lieutenant General de Monchy, was forced to take the matter up with 

the Russian Embassy.3 General Zavarin appeared again in Pristina, commanding the Russian 

forces that would motor from Bosnia to Kosovo in June.

On 24 March, COMSFOR spent his time working the international community. He arranged 

for a series of late afternoon and evening visits to his headquarters by various diplomats, 

ambassadors from the NATO nations, the Contact Group, and the Principals. The message 

was not to panic. The situation was tense but in hand. Some nations and organizations, the 

United States among them, were quick to withdraw civilian workers from the Republika Srpska 

(RS). This only increased uncertainty and did nothing for the standing of the US leadership role 

in Bosnia or COMSFOR’s relationship with the US Ambassador. Meigs’ public position was 

that local security was the responsibility of the RS Government. He pointed out that recently, 

in the face of the adverse Brcko decision and dismissal of the President, the remaining leaders 

had demonstrated their willingness to live up to their responsibilities. They had indicated their 

intention to do so again. It is certainly a measure of the success of the international efforts over 

the previous 3 years that general order was maintained in the face of the crisis generated by 

NATO’s bombing of the Serb homeland.

The DCOMOPS, Lieutenant General Willcocks, took responsibility for going out to meet 

face to face with the leaders of the faction armed forces to enjoin their continued responsible 

behavior. As it happened, the quarterly Joint Military Commission meeting was scheduled 
222

for 25 March. There was an initial flutter when General Talic announced he would not attend. 

General Willcocks suggested, and General Meigs agreed, that the SFOR line would be that 

Talic’s proper place was in his headquarters, maintaining control over his forces at this time of 

stress.4 Some concern was expressed privately that the Federation members of the Joint Military 

Commission might make an issue of Talic’s absence, but they did not. The Serb representative 

made the pro forma complaint about the NATO action in the FRY, but it was generally allowed 

to pass by all present. Later, Talic assured General Willcocks that he would remain in control of 

the RS Armed Forces during the current emergency, and he proved as good as his word.

The SFOR public position on the NATO war in Kosovo and the FRY was that it had nothing 

to do with SFOR. SFOR, though a NATO-led organization, was in Bosnia-Herzegovina with 

a separate mission under the Dayton Accords, and it would continue to perform its duties 

whatever happened next door. The suspected use of Bosnian airspace for strikes on targets in 

FRY remained a sensitive issue, the more so since on the first day of the war two US F-15 fighter 

aircraft made an emergency landing at Sarajevo airport.5 COMSFOR continued to remind 

listeners that SFOR had no air component and was not directing attacks on anyone. Within the 

NATO chain of command, however, General Meigs pointed out the dangers of such violations 

of Bosnian sovereignty to the tenuous peace that existed in Bosnia. In response to the Serb 

observation that increased air activity over Bosnia-Herzegovina was obvious, SFOR replied that 

Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH) had always maintained an air cap over the forces 

in Bosnia, and the cap had only been increased. There was some risk of provocative intrusions 

by the FRY’s air force. The flight time for a FRY airstrike on Sarajevo would be only a matter of 

minutes. Eventually, two FRY aircraft equipped for air-to-air combat were shot down within 

Bosnia-Herzegovina airspace.6 The various RS officials continued to complain. SFOR continued 

to respond in generally the same terms. 

On the ground, the Entity police maintained an adequate level of control, punctuated from 

time to time by demonstrations and the random individual acts of violence that characterize 

the politics of the region. One demonstration in Banja Luka did get out of hand. A crowd of 

students hired by the Srpska Demokratska Stranka (Serb Democratic Party or SDS), and provided 

with alcohol, trashed the US and British consulates. A Serb civilian security guard was injured. 

The next day, this was followed by an attempted arson. Aside from that, the spokesmen of 

the international community credited the Serb police with behaving properly in attempting to 

manage the crowds, which assembled to protest.7 General Meigs counseled restraint to his own 

chain of command in both the case of the FRY aircraft shootdown and the consulate attacks.8

The most serious decision Meigs made during the war, as COMSFOR, was to interdict the 

railroad that runs from Belgrade into Montenegro through the eastern Republika Srpska.9 On 2 

April, in response to indications (observation of a number of FRY uniformed personnel) that 

Serb troops might use the rail line to move troops out of Serbia into Montenegro, Meigs made 

the decision to cut the line peremptorily. The first nation assigned the task to secure the site 

declined, insisting it needed first to ask permission from its national defense ministry. A second 

nation was found willing to act at once, and at around 0800 on 3 April 1999, special operations 

forces assigned to SFOR cut the tracks with explosives near Rijeka, east of Sarajevo. German 

troops from MND-Southeast (SE) secured the area. A Serb railroad guard was killed when he 

and other persons tried to take the crew setting the explosives under fire, notably with forbidden 

long-barreled weapons. The RS Government was told of the action after the fact. 

General Meigs met with the press the afternoon of 3 April to explain his decision. He 

justified the move as “a prudent, precautionary measure to deny military forces of the Federal 

Republic of Yugoslavia entry into and transit through Bosnia and Herzegovina.”10 Later, he 

observed that his concern was preventing the movement of Yugoslav troops through BosniaHerzegovina and a possible confrontation between SFOR troops and a trainload of armed Serb 
223

soldiers.11 This would likely have involved injury to SFOR soldiers if confrontation were on the 

ground or the death of many Serb soldiers if a train had to be stopped with artillery or Apache 

helicopter fire. Of the three alternatives, cutting the track was the least risky. The action was 

clearly within Meigs’ responsibilities to protect the borders of Bosnia from violation by external 

parties, responsibilities most recently exercised by the international community at Martin Brod. 

The action does not seem to have been challenged on such legal grounds. The wisdom of the 

decision to act peremptorily was controversial beforehand with some of the senior international 

officers in the command group, and afterward with the international community that was 

still skittish this early in the war. Meigs patiently went over his logic late into the night with 

his principal NATO military subordinates. To the concerns of the international community, 

Meigs could only reply that the matter was his decision, and general security remained his 

responsibility. He expressed his sympathies for the family of the railroad guard who was killed 

resisting the action, and he worked with the Entity government to find an acceptable control 

regime that might permit reconnection of the rail link. 

It is notable and admirable that Meigs took the decision himself, announcing it to the 

SACEUR, as he took full and personal responsibility despite its controversial nature. In all 

probability, Meigs’ willingness to act decisively had its own calming effect on the situation in the 

Republika Srpska, although the risk of an opposite effect certainly existed, thus possibly putting 

SFOR soldiers at risk. Still, that possible risk was no greater than that of a direct confrontation. 

There seems to have been no suggestion by anyone that transit of Yugoslav soldiers through 

the Republika Srpska to Montenegro should have been permitted. No SFOR involvement of this 

magnitude was required for the rest of the air war.

Of course, Dayton implementation went on within the context of the conflict with FRY. 

The international community warned the various factions not to exploit the ongoing NATO 

operations for partisan advantage, and the High Representative watched the various media 

outlets and the political figures. There were demonstrations, particularly in Banja Luka, and 

the international community went out of its way to praise the Entity police for managing the 

dissent.12 

On 27 March, the Livno Glamoc Combat Training Center Commission reported that 

preliminaries associated with opening the Federation Training Center had all been accomplished 

except for creating a fund to compensate Serb residents displaced from the area and to protect 

Serb graveyards. Brigadier Wilde, the Chief, Faction Liaison Office (CFLO), reported to 

the COMSFOR that the US Embassy was actively trying to circumvent these international 

requirements.13 Federation officials promised to meet their obligation, indeed reported they 

had, but on 29 September COMSFOR upbraided them for failing to deposit the KM 250,000 

compensation called for.14 

One of SFOR’s most important roles during the war was rumor control. All factions collected 

and made “reports of mobilization” by units of their potential enemies. SFOR ensured stability 

in this uneasy environment by keeping an eye on everybody and exploding such rumors 

when they were received. MND-N made some genuine progress in this regard in May when 

it established, at the suggestion of the opposing forces, what were called “Joint Assessment 

Teams” to investigate such reports. These teams had representatives of both Entity armies and 

SFOR and included a security force. They investigated reports of suspected military activity 

and provided a significant medium of reassurance to all factions.15

Generally, SFOR troops were not subject to any extraordinary threats. There were some 

exceptions, of course, and the possibility of violence always hung over events. On 5 April, a 

helicopter reported taking fire from what appeared to be a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) 

round. SFOR civilians were fired on near Butmir, the SFOR base outside of Sarajevo, just inside 

the Republika Srpska.

16 On 25 April, SFOR seized equipment from a Cavarine SA-6 air defense 
224

set-up on suspicion that VRS air defense systems might someway be linked to those of Serbia. 

General Talic denied this with some heat.17

In the early morning hours of 26 May, the most serious attack on SFOR personnel took 

place when a number of light antitank rounds were fired at two houses, owned and in one 

case also occupied, by Serb residents but used by SFOR personnel in the town of Zvornik. One 

house contained SFOR personnel from the Allied Military Intelligence Battalion, the other Joint 

Commission Observers (JCO). The observers were assigned a special status as neutrals by the 

Dayton Accords. They were SFOR soldiers, normally special operations forces, who lived in the 

communities and acted as intermediaries between Entities in time of crisis to reduce uncertainty 

and thus enhance stability. Because their security was essential to the working of the military 

structure, the attempt on them was viewed as particularly dangerous. Fortunately, no one was 

injured in these attacks. 18

On the same day the SFOR billets were attacked in Zvornik, in another area of the Republika 

Srpska troops of the FRY Army detained a routine French patrol near the border town of 

Holandici. They were later released with the statement that had they been Americans, the 

matter would have turned out differently. RS Interior Minister Novic, in replying to a complaint 

by General Willcocks, asserted that the incident had taken place on FRY ground, not in the 

Republika Srpska.

19 In fact, the soldiers were in one of the disputed border areas that resulted 

from differences between the Dayton and Yugoslav maps.

On 9 April, the High Representative, after consulting with various political leaders, declared 

in the name of continued stability that the then current constitutional status quo, with no 

President and a working caretaker government, would be maintained until calmer times 

returned.20 On the 12th, COMSFOR announced he had approved the Entities’ Certification of 

active general officers conducted under Instruction to the Parties Number 14. That same day, 

he reopened the three main airports--Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Mostar--for operations during 

daylight hours.21 General Meigs frequently made himself available to Bosnia media outlets to 

explain SFOR’s position regarding ongoing actions. He was quite comfortable in this role.22

He also continued to apply his influence to keep the political situation under control. At the 

end of April, the National Assembly President called an assembly session in spite of the High 

Representative’s reservations. General Meigs and Ambassador Klein, the latter standing in for 

the absent Westendorp who was pursuing political interests in Europe, met with Assembly 

President Petar Djokic, and separately with the Prime Minister. They warned that future 

international support hinged largely on continued support of Prime Minister Dodik.23 The 

warning appears to have worked.

In May, dismissed President Poplasen, who continued to posture as President of the Republika 

Srpska, created something of a stir when, at an Army reception, he announced the appointment 

of four general officers in the Vojska Republika Srpska (VRS) before permission of COMSFOR had 

been sought.24 Within 2 days, the Minister of Defense submitted four names for promotion with 

the requisite paperwork, signed by the Minister of Defense and not Poplasen, and they were 

approved.25 Even though his announcement had no standing, Poplasen had managed to put 

SFOR on the defensive with the media for a while. This did not affect COMSFOR’s actions when 

the proper authorities acted in accordance with their responsibilities. He refused to be drawn 

into the stir generated by Poplasen’s showboating.

There was also some progress in the Federation. The UN Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina 

announced a second stage in its program to fix the police in Stolac. The office presented a 100-

day plan for Canton 7, extending close International Police Task Force (IPTF) supervision of the 

Stolac force upward into the Canton Ministry of Interior. Most notably, the program required 

separating Ministry of Defense facilities from police installations, demobilizing surplus police, 

and development of a single integrated chain of command.26 On 27 May, it was reported that 
225

24 Serbs had returned to their prewar homes in Stolac.27 Over in the Republika Srpska, there was 

progress too. The Municipal Assembly in Srebrenica, elected in 1997, was finally able to hold its 

first meeting on 7 June 1999. That same day, another person indicted for war crimes (PIFWC), 

Dragon Kulundzija, was picked up in Prijedor.

To properly understand the challenges General Meigs faced personally, it is important 

to remember that, while all this was occurring in Bosnia where he spent most of his time, he 

continued to serve as Commander, US Army Europe, the Army service component of US 

European Command (EUCOM). As such, he was responsible for the US troops in the former 

UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) in Macedonia (three of whom were seized by 

Yugoslav troops in a widely publicized incident), for creating and deploying Army forces as 

part of Kosovo Force (KFOR), and for forming and deploying Task Force Hawk to Albania. He 

oversaw the execution of these functions by V Corps simultaneously with performing those 

of COMSFOR. On top of the foregoing, he was connected electronically to the SACEUR and 

his own Heidelberg headquarters by infrequent visits, daily video teleconferences (VTCs), 

telephone calls, and e-mail. To make matters even more challenging, two of his principal aides 

in SFOR rotated during this period, his French Deputy, Bruno Elie, and his Chief of Staff, KarlHeinz Lather. Meigs, who normally paid scrupulous attention to his own physical well-being, 

began to test the limits of his great reserves of stamina. In effect, during the period of the war in 

Kosovo, he was doing two full-time jobs simultaneously. These were not easy days.

On 10 June 1999, the air war with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ended and the 

occupation of Kosovo began. Bosnia, already becoming an old story, began to feel the impact 

almost at once. The first indication was the headlong departure of Russian troops from 

Bosnia, through Belgrade, to Pristina in Kosovo. SFOR received minimal early warning when 

Russian forces were observed staging at the Bijeljina airfield. When asked, the Russian brigade 

commander said they were going to Serbia. It is not known whether the Russian commander 

himself knew the true story at that point. General Clark gave instructions to Lieutenant General 

Willcocks, in Meigs’ absence, that the Russians should be stopped. He was talked out of such 

an attempt by the DCOMOPS, who argued that participation in SFOR was, after all, voluntary.28

The issue of continued Russian participation in the Balkans was one that would have to be 

resolved at levels higher than COMSFOR’s and even the SACEUR’s.29 SFOR kept an eye on 

the remaining Russians. They continued to do their job as before. After Kosovo, that generally 

entailed maintaining the status quo while new troop strength figures were worked out and the 

headquarters staff structure was modified as the summer turnover took place. The lost Russians 

were not the only or, indeed, the most serious loss to SFOR, as other participating nations found 

themselves stretched to support two Balkan commitments simultaneously. Still, on 22 June 

1999, NATO extended the SFOR mandate for another year.30

NATO had maintained SFOR’s strength at about 32,000 soldiers through the war in Kosovo. 

The SHAPE staff, with SFOR, had reviewed new strength figures designed to reduce forces in 

Bosnia in line with the evolving cooling-off of the situation there and in the Balkans generally. 

The commitment of substantial NATO forces in Kosovo put increased pressure on the SFOR end 

strength, and it was apparent almost at once that a significant reduction was likely. The first place 

visible reductions took place was in the headquarters itself. General Meigs, working through 

his Chief of Staff, Major General Lather, had already begun to streamline the organization 

in coordination with SHAPE.31 The deputy commanders for civil operations and military 

operations were combined in one position. SFOR adopted a new staff structure, generally on 

the US model, where the business of the command would be divided between two principal 

deputies and the staff led by a chief of staff. At the same time, the plan called for the principal 

positions to be downgraded in rank. The commander’s four stars were to be replaced by three, 

the two deputy commanders’ three by two. The chief of staff and now two assistant chiefs of 
226

staff were to become brigadiers, and the CFLO was to be replaced by a colonel. Naturally, care 

had to be taken by NATO that the Contact Group members were all represented by general 

officers. The Italians lost the assistant chief of staff for civil operations and gained the assistant 

chief of staff for support. The new headquarters was to be reduced from 898 to 731. Restaffing 

was to be accomplished by attrition, with the higher-graded incumbents replaced by junior 

successors. The first such example of such consolidation and replacement took place when US 

Brigadier General Henry W. Stratman succeeded Major General John Sylvester on 1 July. With 

his appointment, Stratman assumed oversight of civil as well as military operations. Stratman, 

an artilleryman, was another old Bosnia hand. He had served as Joint Military Commission 

Officer for Major General William Nash with the first Task Force Eagle in 1995-96.

A force restructuring was to accompany this streamlining of the headquarters. The preferred 

option would retain the three framework division headquarters but abolish the intermediate 

brigade level of command in favor of an organization like the US Army’s Pentomic design of 

the 1950s, in which battle groups were commanded directly by the division. This structural 

alternative is sometimes seen as increasing agility in return for some loss of robustness. In peace 

operations, where headquarters remain in place and impose control over an area with deployed 

companies, separate brigade-level headquarters organizations had not been necessary. Indeed, 

they were not used in MND-Southwest (SW). The removal of the brigade headquarters in the 

other divisional areas allowed retention of additional maneuver companies within the given 

force cap. The structure also proposed that the inspection function would become a matter for 

a specialized unit in each division, an innovation pioneered by MND-SE. (In the event, neither 

MND-N nor MND-Southwest [SW] adopted this procedure.)

General Meigs’ replacement by Lieutenant General Ron Adams and a gradual but substantial 

force reduction from 32,000 to 20,000 were announced in September 1999, following an informal 

NATO ministerial meeting in Canada.32 Formal NAC approval followed in October. In the 

evolving constabulary role of SFOR in Bosnia, where the threat no longer involved organized 

military units operating tactically, this was not an unreasonable proposal, particularly when 

it was clear that force size would be reduced anyway. It did rest on an assumption that the 

Entity militaries had become peaceful by choice, not just as a result of suasion resulting from the 

weight of the SFOR contingent, and that the balance achieved between the three faction armies 

had become self-sustaining. More than one officer observed that SFOR’s strength would now 

drop below the old UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) strength figures, although conditions 

were far different from those in the early 1990s. 

In June, however, while all this was being sorted out, General Meigs was confronted with a 

significant turnover of headquarters personnel. Meigs served as COMSFOR for a year. During 

that time, he had three successive staff teams to assist him. The change from the second to 

third was the most abrupt. In about a month, most of his personnel staff and his principal 

staff subordinates, save Lieutenant General Willcocks and Brigadier Wilde, the CFLO, were 

replaced.33 Meigs’ comment at the time was that about all he could do was “moderate the 

chaos” as new staff members replaced more familiar ones who had worked out the personal 

relationships necessary for any large staff organization to function smoothly.34 In this particular 

case, the loss of such stalwarts as Lieutenant General Elie and Major General Lather was keenly 

felt. Lieutenant General Charles Henri de Monchy, a French Army aviator, replaced Elie; Major 

General Alphart von Horn, General Lather. The trusted NATO Political Adviser (POLAD), 

Mr. Luis Sampaio, departed for a diplomatic assignment in Angola and was replaced by a 

Dutch political officer, Mr. Rob Engels. The irrepressible Italian, Major General Giannatiempo, 

departed for retirement in Italy to raise horses. His duties were absorbed into the functions of 

the single Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations, Brigadier General Stratman.

To assist in the transition, General Meigs drafted a new memorandum for his command 
227

group, defining its members’ respective spheres of influence.35 He divided the SFOR world 

generally into policy and operational strategy on the one hand, and the operational and tactical 

on the other. The Deputy Commander, General de Monchy, was charged to oversee the former 

and the DCOMOPS, General Willcocks, the latter, particularly regarding oversight of the dayto-day operations of the MNDs and relationships with the Entities’ militaries.36 Additionally, 

the memorandum asked General de Monchy to oversee relations with the High Representative 

and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the execution of SFOR’s 

responsibility for supervision of the Special Police under Annex 1A, political relationships with 

the Entity Governments, and SFOR’s responsibilities for airspace control.

The difficulty of the SFOR staff arrangement always revolved around the authority granted 

the chief of staff, particularly since the incumbent was from the German tradition of processoriented chiefs. The memorandum addressed the difficulty this way:

Because of our dual deputy structure, the ACOS-MILOPS working for the DCOM-OPS serves as 

the focus of commander’s intent and operational plans and orders. However, CJ2 and CJ3 are parts 

of the staff. It is the Chief’s responsibility to ensure they meet the needs of the DCOM-OPS in their 

day to day function.

Comparing this description with the staff organization chart reveals that a certain amount 

of goodwill was required by the commander’s principal deputies for the whole business to 

function. Guidance for the NATO POLAD continued to grant him status as primus inter pares, 

but indicated that at times the commander would consult directly with the US POLAD on US 

national issues. In July and August 1999, there was a period of internal team-building at SFOR 

headquarters.

After the Kosovo war, returning to the status quo meant focusing on the Madrid priorities of 

refugee return, professionalization of the faction armed forces, support of the civil agencies in 

their efforts to counter the “culture of impunity,” performing the routine tasks of maintaining the 

transportation system of Bosnia-Herzegovina by bridge and railroad building and maintenance, 

and occasionally arresting PIFWCs. In late July, SFOR provided security for the Stability Pact 

Summit, an international conference on Balkan reconstruction hosted in Sarajevo by the Bosnian 

Government. SFOR was directly responsible for the general security of the conference, and for 

insuring host nation arrangements were adequate.

Minority returns had always been a problem. For various reasons, perhaps none greater 

than the fact that Serbia ceased to be either a promising stopping place for Serb refugees driven 

out of Bosnia by Croat and Muslim offensives or a reliable support for the RS hardliners, 

minority returns began to pick up in the summer of 1999. The international community was 

better prepared to coordinate returns by then as well. The Reconstruction and Returns Task 

Force (RRTF), an entity of the Office of the High Representative (OHR), seems finally to have 

begun to solve the impasse on cross-boundary returns.37 Movement in one area began to be 

coordinated with movement in another. SFOR supported the RRTF effort by providing military 

personnel (particularly in the operations cell); consolidated multiagency data collection and 

verification; area security; funding for small projects; de-mining support; and participating in 

the international information campaign. One indicator of the progress made was that by June 

1999 Serb representation in Drvar’s population had risen to 45 percent, although Drvar remained 

one of the toughest areas in terms of the effort required to keep a lid on Croat resistance.38

The professionalization initiative also continued to flower. Initially, General Meigs established 

a Professionalization Task Force, led by Dutch Major General Fritz Polle. The primary function of 

this group seems to have been developing a schedule of educational activities for Entity officers 

and a model program for their sequential and progressive education. By May, General Polle 
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had departed, and the task force was absorbed into the FLO. The task force’s contribution was 

a schedule of conferences and overseas visits for mixed groups of officers from all the Entities. 

The conferences generally were to expose Bosnian officers to the workings of Western armies 

and each other, and to break down the provincialism that marked most officers of all factions. 

In May, Brigadier Wilde laid out the whole program for COMSFOR. Wilde’s memorandum 

included staffing the CFLO; initiating the Entity Armed Forces Inspector General Office; reenergizing expansion of the Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM) as ordered by 

the Madrid Peace Implementation Counsel (PIC); setting up a Macro Security and Cooperation 

and Professionalisation Programme; conducting disaster preparedness training and exercises 

for faction troops; holding a Security Cooperation Graduate Reunion (a program to bring 

conference attendees back together in Bosnia-Herzegovina); other professionalization support 

activities; and an MND guidance paper. 

General Meigs’ enthusiasm to get the effort up and running is apparent from his marginal 

notations on a status report from the CFLO: “Can’t wait till we pursue!” “Let’s force them out 

in the open”; “OK, let’s document and put pressure on them.”39 General Lather had written on 

the covering document, “This is challenging and needs only constant pressure onto the EAF to 

comply.” Meigs responded, noting that most resistance came from the smallest (and thus most 

threatened) faction: “Don’t let the Croats slow roll us! Document their obfuscations--make it 

public and let’s pressure them.”40

The most substantive development was the creation, also under the FLO, of an Office of the 

Inspector General, as anticipated by Instruction to the Parties Number 14. The US Inspector 

General, Colonel Robert Tomasovic, arrived in April 1999 while the bombing campaign was 

underway in Serbia and Kosovo. Tomasovic was an Army National Guard officer from Oregon 

where he was an award-winning high school wrestling coach. He had served a tour in Oregon 

as an inspector general. As it happened, Colonel Tomasovic was ideally suited for the task 

by his impressive demeanor and presence, his transparent character, and uncomplicated (but 

hardly simple-minded) understanding of integrity and professional standards. 

Tomasovic began building the Office of the Inspector General from scratch, indeed from 

an empty building at the Butmir SFOR troop complex near the SFOR headquarters at Ilidza. 

Eventually, the office consisted of two American inspectors general (Tomasovic and an 

assistant), two translators, and six faction inspectors general, two from each faction army.41 The 

mission of the Office of the Inspector General was “to monitor and investigate as necessary 

issues of professionalism and ethical behavior in the entity armed forces.”42

In his first 4 weeks, Colonel Tomasovic opened his office (not the least difficult task), prepared 

to receive his new colleagues, and developed a training program for the new inspectors general 

based on Instruction to the Parties Number 14 and the curriculum of the US Army’s Inspector 

General School.43 Among his more significant initial tasks was compiling in a single source 

all the faction and Entity Armed Forces’ regulations and statutes. The principle laid down 

was that conduct would be measured against the dual standards of Letter of Instruction 14, 

which derived its legitimacy from the Dayton Accords, and the Entities’ own constitutions 

and defense statutes, and the factions’ military regulations. This was not as routine a task as 

might be imagined. Even in the Federation, which was supposed to have an integrated military 

force, there was no common military law. Rather, there was an agreed set of 23 principles to be 

observed by both the Croat and Bosniac elements of the Federation Armed Forces.

General Meigs participated in the Inspector General training program in June, during its 

third and final week. He spent over an hour discussing the importance of the task the inspectors 

general were to about to undertake. He clarified his intent and expressed his commitment to 

ensuring they would be protected professionally so they could make their judgments in “a 

fair, impartial, and ruthless fashion, against established standards.”44 According to Colonel 
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Tomasovic, Meigs’ personal contribution crystallized the office into a viable organization. The 

office was soon one in which officers from the former warring factions not only dealt with each 

other professionally on duty time but also assisted each other on a personal level, with the 

difficulties of living in a country still divided geographically and culturally as a result of the 

war. Tomasovic insisted on one key principle in the internal operations of the office, and that 

was complete transparency. Faction inspectors general were permitted and expected to tell 

their respective army commanders about anything discussed inside the office.

COMSFOR administered the Inspector General Oath of Office at the 17 June Joint Military 

Commission meeting in Sarajevo in the presence of the leadership of the Entity (faction) 

Armies.45 A key notion of the Professionalization Program was included in the COMSFOR’s 

prepared remarks, self-administration by the factions and the Presidency, with oversight by 

COMSFOR.

The basic procedures are to be run by you and your Defense Ministers, with monitoring via a 

Presidency Inspector General and Ombudsman system, but the ultimate policing of the system by 

me.46

From the start, the faction army commanders’ support was good. Following their swearing 

in, Colonel Tomasovic briefed each of the Entity Defense Ministers, some of whom were more 

doubtful.47 Before the faction inspector generals were certified, the office had three cases, 

based on reports of politically inspired retirements of senior officers in the Croat faction of 

the Federation Army. Tomasovic looked for cases from all faction armies so a perception of 

balance and evenhandedness could prevail. By the time Meigs gave up command, 12 inquiries 

had been conducted, with all factions represented. Six inquiries dealt with issues of improper 

promotion or relief, two with political involvement, one with diversion of military labor for 

personal gain, two with explicit anti-Dayton comments, and one with a matter of administrative 

assistance. The program of professionalization, insofar as ensuring ethical conduct, now had 

a real, full-time institutional check. Notably, all findings of misconduct did not automatically 

result in suspension. Some resulted only in counseling to familiarize faction general officers of 

prohibitions common in Western armies but still new in the Balkans. Still, it was clear that there 

was a standard, and now someone was watching. The Inspector General Office was an initiative 

designed to make a difference in the nature and culture of the faction armed forces over the long 

haul.

The Office of the Inspector General continued to evolve. On 1 September, a second revision 

to Instruction to the Parties Number 14 was published. The FLO had written the initial version 

and first revision in response to Meigs’ guidance. Tomasovic drafted the second revision. The 

new document reflected a stronger influence from Tomasovic’s US Army Inspector General 

background and the lessons learned and feedback received during the first months of operation. 

The revision extended various aspects of the imposed professional code of ethics downward to 

include all officers.48 It also extended the coverage of general officers, those serving in advisory 

positions in the Ministry of Defense, as well as those with the forces. One of the office’s earliest 

tasks had been creation of a database that identified serving general officers and officers not 

yet promoted serving in general officer positions. The new revision established a commandbased definition of military competence. It defined with greater precision the limits on gifts 

and honoraria and made explicit the prohibition, heretofore in Organization for Security and 

Confidence in Europe (OSCE) rules, against officers holding public office. The instruction also 

extended to all officers the basic obligations of integrity, limits on political involvement, and 

support of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP). It restated the prohibition 

on double transfers, that is, movement out of and return back to Bosnia-Herzegovina military 
230

status through a second party army--like that threatened by Generals Sopta and Budimir. 

The annex establishing the Office of the Inspector General was expanded as well. It now 

elaborated rules of procedure for inquiries and investigations, a distinction arising from the 

US Army Office of Inspector General and dealing with the formality of the process employed. 

The changes were justified as “a further step along the road to fulfilling the Dayton Annex 

1A Mandate” and as “precondition to full participation in the NATO Security Cooperation 

Framework and the eventual integration into the family of European Nations.”49

PIFWCs continued to be taken into custody. On 6 July, a member of the RS National 

Assembly, Radoslav Brdjanin was taken in Banja Luka.50 In late August, SFOR was spared 

what could have been an embarrassing situation. General Talic, the Chief of Staff of the VRS, 

was arrested by Austrian authorities, under a sealed indictment, while Talic was attending an 

OSCE conference in Vienna.51 There was remarkably little public response within the Entity, 

compared to some earlier arrests.

Perhaps the toughest assignment, given SFOR with only 3 weeks notice, was to ensure 

security for a regional postwar meeting of delegations of the countries of Southeastern Europe. 

The Stability Pact Summit was held in Sarajevo in late July under the chairmanship of Finnish 

President Marti Ahtisaari.52 This was a gathering of international leaders, called for by the 

German Chancellor following the war in Kosovo. The conference had the symbolic value of 

showing that what had been viewed heretofore as a limited Bosnian problem was actually a 

wider Balkan problem.53 The Bosnian Government went all out to make Sarajevo look good for 

the visiting dignitaries. Buildings were painted. Construction on the way into town from the 

airport was rushed. New light rail trains replaced the old post-war rattletraps on the rail system 

running through town, only to disappear again afterward. The conference was held in the old 

Zetra Olympic Conference Center next to soccer fields now converted to mass cemeteries. 

The Bosnian police were responsible for close-in security, but SFOR had responsibility for air 

space coordination, provision of defensive air combat air patrols (CAP), general area security, 

and incident response, all matters of great importance since the conference would draw the 

major NATO political leaders, including President Bill Clinton, to Sarajevo. COMSFOR 

deployed forces across MND boundaries without difficulty, validating in practice the concept 

of operational flexibility soon to be central to a restructured SFOR.54 Meigs created a special 

task force, headed by Brigadier General John Casey, the Commander, Seventh Army Training 

Command (Seventh ATC), to oversee the “inner-ring” security operation. He brought down 

a military police brigade from Germany. Some 4,000 SFOR soldiers were concentrated under 

command of MND-SE. A quick reaction force was established using US aviation and troops 

from the Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU). General Stratman, the Assistant Chief of Staff 

for Operations, and the SFOR operations staff drew up the overall security plan and coordinated 

the various facets of Operation BOLERO throughout the conference. 

Security for international heads of state is always a serious responsibility. The night before 

their arrival at the Summit, Meigs’ responsibilities became heavier when he received reports 

that a Serb paramilitary group intended to disrupt the summit by using an SA-7 missile to shoot 

down an airplane. Approaches to the Sarajevo airfield, which is in a valley bordered by high 

wooded hills, are particularly vulnerable to such interdiction. Meigs had to decide whether to 

recommend the conference be delayed or to proceed. He recommended it go on as scheduled. 

The following morning, the RS Minister of the Interior revealed that the reports were unreliable 

and specious, and that one suspect had been apprehended and a second was out of the country. 

Following a sleepless night for COMSFOR, the conference went off without incident.55

The Stability Summit was the swan song for the second High Representative, Mr. Carlos 

Westendorp. Westendorp had been High Representative during the tenures of both General 

Shinseki and General Meigs. On 1 August 1999, an Austrian diplomat, Wolfgang Petritsch, 
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succeeded to the office. As earlier noted, Westendorp’s replacement was more aggressive and 

more inclined to fire Bosnian officials who did not measure up or obstructed the Dayton Process. 

Westendorp imposed some significant judicial statutes on the Federation on his way out the 

door, a set of regulations that would be useful for furthering the program of the international 

regime in the days to come, and ultimately leading to the apprehension of the killers of Deputy 

Interior Minister Leutar in September 2000.56 Westendorp’s immediate deputies departed 

too, all but American Jacques Klein. Klein changed jobs, replacing Elizabeth Rhen as Special 

Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations.

In August, a new US Ambassador was appointed. Ambassador Thomas Miller proved 

to be more confident and cooperative to work with than his predecessor. On 24 August, 

General Meigs wrote to Miller to explain the priorities SFOR was preparing to propose to the 

international community and ask for the Ambassador’s comments. The paper provides a good 

view of how General Meigs saw conditions in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the end of his tour. It is 

notable that Meigs was an advocate for civil programs, indicating in passing where SFOR offered 

support to the civilian implementation effort. There was, he wrote, “a window of opportunity” 

created by domestic political pressures on President Milosevic in the Serb Republic, the illness 

of President Tudjman in Croatia, and the weakness of the Muslim Stranka Demokratske Akcije 

(Party of Democratic Action [SDA]) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, consequent to various revelations 

of corruption. (Tudjman, as it turned out, was soon on his deathbed, and President Izetbegovic, 

the charismatic leader of the SDA, was preparing to retire, while Serb leader Milosevic would 

fall from power the following year.) Serbian and Croatian political and economic influence had 

been reduced, Meigs wrote, and there was wide pressure for regional military reductions. 

Meigs proposed that for the next 6 months the international community should focus on four 

priorities: displaced person and refugee (DPRE) returns, development of a strategy for the year 

2000 municipal and general elections, fighting crime and corruption, and pursuing and helping 

implement military restructuring and downsizing.57 In the area of returns, Meigs pointed to the 

sudden rise in “unsponsored” returns to areas heretofore denied them. He pointed to the need 

for immediate support from the international community as an investment that would pay off 

the following year, if this year’s returns could be seen as successful. SFOR would continue to 

monitor returns, seek to maintain a generally secure environment, encourage and pressure local 

and national officials to support returns, and, in conjunction with the international community, 

assess trends and problem areas.

A sound electoral strategy was essential for functional and political reasons. Functionally, 

the 2000 elections would demand greater planning and preparation, first because they were 

scheduled to mark the withdrawal of the OSCE from responsibility for administration of 

elections, and second because a much-reduced SFOR would have substantially less capacity 

to underwrite the election structure with executive support. More generally, Meigs argued, 

as had his predecessor, that the international community had an interest in helping “the forces 

of pragmatism, moderation, and pluralism win, so that these elections serve as a key turningpoint in making the peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina self-sustaining.”58 (Fall 2000 elections would 

show that the international community had still not figured out how to win a Bosnian election, 

particularly in the Serb and Croat communities.59)

Meigs tied the fight against crime and corruption to the Madrid PIC. He traced the criminal 

culture’s rise to the post-communist legacy and practices of the war years. “Today,” he wrote, 

“[it] provides vital support to the ruling elites of all three ethnic communities.”60 The problem 

would be solved only by creating a proper legal framework in which honest Bosnian police and 

justice officials could operate. “SFOR supports their initiatives by using its intelligence assets; 

by working with them to enforce the rule of law; by providing area security for key police 
232

actions; and by reinforcing the IC’s [international community’s] message with Bosnian officials 

at all levels.”61 SFOR could also play a role in “ensuring that the local authorities operate in 

accordance with OHR’s policy.”

Military restructuring of the faction armies was, in fact, an effort to be worked out through 

the SCMM, a responsibility of the High Representative, not COMSFOR. The commander made 

some modest proposals for energizing the new permanent secretariat to that body, and noted 

that SFOR efforts to demilitarize Brcko in light of the March arbitration decision, to continue 

work on professionalization, to work with the IPTF to retrain the Special Police, and to support 

of IPTF efforts to create a Border Police, all would contribute to the possibilities of success. The 

letter is a measure of the NATO military commander’s breadth of interests and influence, as well 

as of the extent to which the focus of international efforts had shifted away from the original 

reason for the dispatch of the Implementation Force. SFOR no longer drove the pace, but its 

competence to speak was still very broad, and its presence was still seen as the ultimate resource 

in the hand of the international community in its efforts to create a new political environment in 

the central Balkans.

By September, the extensive work of Oscar Vera, Hector Gullan, and the various intelligencegathering organs had produced a detailed picture of the web of financial and personal linkages 

that tied the various front corporations, political parties, and military and veterans’ associations 

together and linked them to extraterritorial bodies, including intelligence organs of neighboring 

governments. In the Federation, the judicial laws imposed by Carlos Westendorp at the end of 

his tour provided the legal framework for action at the Federal level against what were local 

and regional organizations. The major challenge was finding mechanisms to exploit such 

information using Federation police, without having that same network alert the subjects in 

time to escape. The international community’s fight against the “culture of impunity” saw a 

pair of related major actions in early September and October 1999. Indeed, these were General 

Meigs’ final operations in Bosnia. They represented the climax of his efforts to break the Croat 

mafia. 

In September, the Bosniac branch of the Federation Special Police, supervised by the IPTF 

with SFOR in support, raided the Croat-based Renner Company. The raid was not an entire 

success because information leaked from cantonal authorities brought in at the last minute at 

the insistence of President Jelavic. Additionally, a senior IPTF official was discovered to be in 

the pay of the Mostar cartel. As Federation and cantonal authorities bumped against each other, 

execution was delayed and major targets were able to flee. Naturally, the use of Bosniac police 

against a Croat target did nothing to cement inter-Federation police relations. President Jelavic 

complained bitterly to General Meigs about this, the continued SFOR focus on Stolac, and 

difficulties with the international community over appointing a successor to deceased Deputy 

Interior Minister Leutar.62 The loss of the major suspects did not, of course, result in a complete 

failure. Their flight itself was bound to disrupt the criminal organization, at least locally, and 

even in failure there were indications of where the rotten apples were in the Federation police 

structure.63 The Stolac raid was only a precursor to a follow-on action.

On October 12, a more decisive and more successful raid occurred in Mostar, Operation 

WESTAR. This action did not require early participation of either the IPTF or cantonal police 

because it was aimed against anti-Dayton activities that could be addressed by SFOR alone 

under Annex 1A. As a result, planning was known by only a very few key personnel. In the 

first instance, the effort was targeted against illegal possession of weapons and materials that 

threatened “a safe and secure environment.”64 More to the point, the intention was to uncover 

the linkages between actions in the Mostar region and foreign (Croatian) intelligence authorities. 

The operation required much of Meigs’ personal energy and that of Deputy Commander 

Lieutenant General de Monchy. There was initial difficulty gaining acceptance for the mission 
233

by MND-SE, difficulty that required the personal intervention of the deputy commander with 

his own Ministry of Defense in Paris. Then, once the operation was underway, Meigs’ own 

government withdrew at the last minute some force augmentations originally deemed necessary 

to gain access to the four sites to be taken down. French Major General Arnold Schwerdoffer, 

Commander, MND-SE, agreed to go ahead with only his own resources. 

In spite of the friction, the operation in the early hours of 12 October was a great success. 

MSU troops controlled the streets surrounding the targets, and French soldiers conducted the 

entry operations. SFOR seized a variety of illegal weapons held by elements of the shadowy 

Croat secret intelligence agency, along with evidence of its ties to its Croatian parent.65 Captured 

documents involved illegal intelligence operations directed against various international 

agencies involved in administering the GFAP, illegal financial transactions, and the manufacture 

of fraudulent credit and telephone cards.66 Evidence of those and other illegal actions involving 

civil offenses was turned over to Federation law enforcement agencies for prosecution under 

Federation law.67 One Croat suffered a broken leg when he tried to attack an SFOR soldier with 

an iron bar. Some minor injuries were recorded as Mostar citizens turned out at the urging of the 

Croat veteran’s organization (Hrvatski veterani i invalidi domovinskog rata [HVIDRA]) and several 

local media outlets to block or attack SFOR soldiers. One SFOR soldier was seriously injured in 

a traffic accident on the way to the Mostar area. Just as in the events in Stolac, which occurred 

at the start of Meigs’ time as COMSFOR, the Mostar raid was aimed principally at breaking the 

power of the Croat criminal networks and their Croatian connections. Because the criminals 

were vulnerable in this case to action under Annex 1A, SFOR could act alone and decisively, 

whereas at Stolac in September it could only prompt action by the IPTF, which it could support 

but could not lead or entirely control. 

These last two operations represented the finale in a yearlong campaign unified by a single 

strategic objective of breaking the criminal power in Mostar-Stolac. Meigs had put his hand to 

the plow in November 1998 with Operation ESMIRALDA. He had followed his initial tactical 

actions with a patient, long-term intelligence-gathering operation. He had provided support 

and impetus to the High Representative’s judicial reform edicts, which created the environment 

in which the subsequent police and SFOR operations could succeed. In September and October 

1999, he began to harvest the fruits of his labors, leaving their continued exploitation to his 

successor. The patient sequencing of events and actions, both in support and independent, with 

his eye always on the final objective, provides a fine example of the operational art in peace 

enforcement by a military commander. That is, there is clear evidence of sustained, simultaneous, 

and sequential actions to achieve strategic ends, all this combined with the simultaneous efforts 

to enhance professionalization by imposing a comprehensive code of ethics.

In that same October, there was evidence of how far the efforts of the international 

community had come and how far they had yet to go. On 9 October, three leading political 

figures of the Republika Srpska traveled to Belgrade to meet with President and indicted war 

criminal Milosevic. According to a press release, Tri-President Radisic (a SLOGA member), 

National Assembly Speaker Djokic, and former President Poplasen went to discuss cooperation 

between Yugoslavia and the Republika Srpska. “They mutually agreed,” the report continued, 

“on the need to continue the consistent implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement.”68 A 

month later, after Meigs had turned over command, the Federation government followed up his 

final actions with their own offensive--a raid against the Renner Market in Stolac.69

General Montgomery C. Meigs turned over command of SFOR on 18 October 1999, 4 days 

short of a year from his arrival. On the 20th, he made a farewell appearance at the North Atlantic 

Council.70 He reported progress and reviewed the events of the year that have been discussed 

previously. He reported that force reductions and demilitarization related to the Brcko 

decision were moving forward and were expected to be finalized by mid-December. He found 
234

encouragement in the stability experienced during the Kosovo bombing, in the inter-Entity 

cooperation displayed at the Stability Pact Summit, and in the marked increase in “spontaneous” 

returns. He pointed to the success experienced in the professionalization initiatives and noted 

as evidence of progress faction recommendations for creating a joint staff college and a national 

peacekeeping force made up of elements from all factions. 

For the coming year, he listed several priorities for his successor. The first was the continuing 

need to protect Bosnia against instability from across its borders: “SFOR must continue to keep 

Bosnia-Herzegovina in the lee of the storms beyond its borders while encouraging the roots of 

stability to sink deeper at home.” He pointed to the need to cut the “umbilical cords that stretch 

back to Zagreb, Belgrade, and the Middle East” and “to break up the illegal combinations of 

crime, paramilitary and secret intelligence organizations that support the hardline political 

elites in each faction.” He offered the recent operation in Mostar as an example of what could 

be done to cut such linkages. He pointed to the importance of the 2000 elections and the need to 

develop a common strategy to assist the pro-Dayton forces in Bosnia.

He endorsed the announced reduction of force for SFOR, but with several caveats. First, 

a small force would have to be an able force. Nations would have to provide capable forces 

if SFOR were to succeed. Moreover, Meigs made it clear that the force proposed was, in his 

view, the absolute minimum. Unilateral withdrawals, such as those he had experienced during 

the summer, would have to be avoided. The Commander of SFOR would require flexibility 

in the use of forces across divisional boundaries. And a robust intelligence capability focused 

on human intelligence would be more important than ever. SFOR should maintain its civilmilitary capability, and finally the MSU capability should be enhanced both for public security 

operations and its investigative skills. He referred to the MSU as the “sharp end of the spear.”

Finally, he thanked the North Atlantic Council for the opportunity to serve in Bosnia as both 

a multinational division commander and as COMSFOR. 

NATO is pioneering the doctrine and practice of peacekeeping operations in a multinational 

environment, a strategic application likely to grow in the coming years. It was indeed a great 

honor to lead a multinational force of 32,000 men and women from 37 nations in such an operation, 

and to contribute to developing the capabilities of NATO members and partners in this important 

endeavor. 

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 10

1. HQ SFOR, Secretary to the Chief of Staff, Minutes of JMC on 25 March 1999, dated 25 March 1999, para 2.

2. Observation of the author who was present in SFOR HQ at the time.

3. Memorandum from Lieutenant General de Monchy to COMSFOR, SUBJECT: Russian Airborne Brigade and 

General Lieutenant Yepitanov, date 10 May 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, 

Notebook, COM LOG 1999, May.

4. Minutes of JMC on 25 March 1999, para. 2.

5. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Sheena Thomson, SFOR, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 25 March 1999, 

1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

6. General Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public 

Affairs, 2001), p. 209.

7. Various spokesmen, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 26 March 1999, 1136 Hours, Coalition Press 
235

Information Center, Tito Barracks.

8. Discussion by author with General Meigs and Colonel James Marks.

9. Clark, Waging Modern War, 239. One must remember that Meigs was also CGUSAREUR and as such 

involved heavily in the creation and dispatch of Task Force Hawk to Albania. He did this simultaneously while he 

kept the lid on Bosnia.

10. General Meigs’ comments in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 3 April 1999, 1437 Hours, Coalition 

Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

11. Meigs to author.

12. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 26 March 1999, 11.36 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, 

Tito Barracks. 

13. Letter to COMSFOR from Andreas Herdina, Chairman, Livno Glamoc CTC Commission--Third Report, dated 

27 March 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, April, 

CFLO’s analysis is attached.

14. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to President Ante Jelavic, dated September 29, 1999, 

in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, CG (Meigs) Signature Files, 1999.

15. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Dave Scanlon, SFOR, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 May 1999, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks

16. Both incidents are discussed in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 6 April 1999, 1137 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks and HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 8 April 1999, 1135 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

17. HQ SFOR, Chief Faction Liaison Office, [Memorandum] DCOMOPS MEETING WITH GEN TALIC CGS 

VRS, 28 April 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, 

April.

18. See comments by Lt. Cdr. Dave Scanlon, SFOR, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 27 May 1999, 

1149 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks. 

19. Letter from Srdoje Novic, Interior Minister, Republika Srpska, to Lieutenant General M. A. Willcocks, Deputy 

Commander Operations, SFOR, dated 2 June 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, 

Notebook, COM LOG 1999, June.

20. Office of the High Representative, Statement, Statement by the High Representative, Sarajevo, 9 April 1999. 

Available at http://www.ohr.int/stat/s990409a.htm. There was to be no President of the RS until the fall 2000 

elections.

21. Both addressed in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 12 April 1999, 1136 Hours, Coalition Press 

Information Center, Tito Barracks.

22. See, for example, HQ SFOR, Public Affairs Office, Transcript, COMSFOR General Montgomery Meigs, Live 

Interview with Jadranko Katana, OBN TV Studios, Sarajevo, 14 April 1999.

23. Minutes of these meetings are filed in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, 

COM LOG 1999, Apr. Letter from Carlos Westendorp, High Representative, to Mr. Petar Djokic, Speaker of the 

Republika Srpska National Assembly, dated 22 April, 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative 

Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, Apr.

24. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Dave Scanlon, SFOR, in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 11 May 1999, 1130 
236

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

25. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 13 May 1999, 1130 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, 

Tito Barracks. 

26. Comments by Wendy Moore, UNMIBH, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 13 May 1999, 1130 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

27. Comments by Wendy Rappeport, UNHCR, HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference 27 May 1999, 1149 

Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

28. Information provided by General Meigs. See Clark, Waging Modern War, pp. 377-378. Clark does not 

mention the discussion with General Wilcox.

29. HQ SFOR, Public Affairs Office, Media Lines for 13 June, e-mail in possession of author. Comments of LT. 

Cdr. Dave Scanlon, SFOR, in Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 15 June 1999, 1135 Hours, Coalition Press Information 

Center, Tito Barracks.

30. Comments of Lt. Cdr. Sheena Thomson, SFOR, in Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 15 June 1999, 1135 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

31. HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Commander’s Files, Handout, HQ SFOR RESTRUCTURING, by Chief 

of Staff, MG Karl-Heinz Lather. (Copy in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Miscellaneous Files in USAREUR 

History Office.)

32. HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and General Wesley K. 

Clark, 27 September 1999, 1630 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks. The NATO meeting was 

held from 21-22 September in Toronto, Canada.

33. Willcocks and Wilde were assigned for a year. Wilde arrived in November, Willcocks in March.

34. Comment to the author at the time.

35. Memorandum for DCOM, DCOM-OPS, CHIEF OF STAFF AND POLAD, SUBJECT: Function of the 

Command Group, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, June. 

Memorandum is unsigned. A note, apparently from the COM to General Lather, says presciently, “OK with me, 

all of the group just need to be “constructive.”

36. The division of duties between DCOM, DCOM-OPS, and Chief of Staff were subsequently brought into 

alignment with those of KFOR at the behest of the DSACEUR, General Rupert Smith. The form adopted indicates 

that the SFOR solution was the dominant model. MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: Functions of the Command Group, 

undated [coversheet dated 21 SEP 99] in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, 

COM LOG 1999, September.

37. Office of the High Representative, Reconstruction and Return Task Force, Reconstruction and Return Task 

Force. Available at http://www.ohr.int/rrtf.htm. There are periodic references in the Joint Press Conferences to 

Regional RRTF meetings involving representatives from both Entities to coordinate returns. In 1999 the RRTF 

published a comprehensive Action Plan for 1999.

38. Data from a miscellaneous report from G-5, HQ MN-(SW), titled: SFOR Multinational Division South-West, 

Displaced Person and Refugee Information, July 1999, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, 

Commander’s Files.

39. Memorandum for COMSFOR (Thru COS), PROFESSIONALISATION AND EDUCATION OF THE 

EAF--UPDATE, dated 9 May 1999, signed by Brigadier R. M. Wilde, in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, 

Administrative Office, File, IG/Professionalization. 
237

40. Ibid. Notes on coversheet.

41. HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Notebook, Joint Military Commission; Conference Package for COMSFOR, 

17 June 1999.

42. Briefing slide used at the 7 December Joint Military Commission Meeting. Briefing is titled, Entity Armed 

Forces in a Democratic Society; Ethics, Professionalism, & The Rule of Law. Copy provided to the author by the SFOR 

Historian who attended the JMC meeting. 

43. He was assisted by some preliminary analysis by the USAREUR Inspector General done at the behest of 

General Meigs.

44. Colonel Robert Tomasovic to the author.

45. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Press Advisory, 26th 

Meeting of the Joint Military Commission, 19 June 1999. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/ sfor/advisory/1999/

p990619a.htm. The record of the meeting is HQ, SFOR, Secretary to the Chief of Staff, Memorandum, SUBJECT: 

Minutes of JMC Held on 7 December 1998, signed by Major General Huber Gosch, Chief of Staff. Copy provided 

to author by SFOR Historian. NOTE: The military head of the Croat faction army sits as Deputy Commander of 

the Federation Army.

46. Remarks in Briefing, Entity Armed Forces in a Democratic Society; Ethics, Professionalism, & The Rule of Law.

47. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force, Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Press Advisory, 

Inspector General Briefing to RS Minister of Defense, 22 June 1999. Available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/advisory/1999/

0990622a.htm.

48. MEMORANDUM, SUBJECT: CHANGE 17 TO INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PARTIES (ITP), in HQ SFOR, 

Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, September.

49 Ibid., Annex A, p. 2.

50. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force, Press Release, Suspected War Criminal Detained, Coalition Press 

Information Office, Tito Barracks, 6 July 1999. Available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/advisory/1999/p990706a.htm. 

51. Comments of Alexander Nitzsche, OSCE, in Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 26 August 1999, 1140 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center.

52. The characterization of the Stability Pact Summit is taken verbatim from the Chronology for 1999 produced 

by the Office of the High Representative. Available at http://www.ohr.int/calendar.htm.

53. Carlos Westendorp claimed to be the father of the Stability Pact, along with his German Deputy, Michael 

Steiner. Westendorp saw the conference as a modern Congress of Berlin (1878) and a replacement for the Yalta 

settlement of 1945. Office of the High Representative, Speech, Speech of the High Representative Carlos Westendorp at 

the Stability Pact Dinner, Sarajevo, July 29, 1999. Available at http://www.ohr.int/speeches/s990729a.htm.

54. Note to author from BG Henry Stratman.

55. The account of the SA-7 plot is in a note from General Meigs to the author. Meigs described the security 

arrangements in HQ SFOR, SFOR INFORMER: Interview by Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, COMSFOR, to BiH TV from 

Zentra Stadium, July 29, 1999. Available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/sforinformer/Hi...s/990728%20Summit/ interview/

p990729b.htm.

56. The particular regulations are those dealing with the Supreme Court of the Federation, that imposing the 

Law on Special Witness Identity Protection in Criminal Proceedings in the Federation, and that amending the 

Federation Prosecutor’s Office, all imposed on 30 July 1999. To judge the sweep of the international assumption 

of authority over the detail of Bosnian affairs, see Office of the High Representative, Document, Decisions by the 
238

High Representative, at http://www.ohr.int/decisions.htm. On the Leutar investigation, see United Nations Mission 

in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Statement by SRSG [Special Representative of the UN Secretary General], Jacques Paul Klein 

on the Investigation into the assassination of Federation Deputy Minister of the Interior Jozo Leutar, 26 September 2000. 

Available at http://www.unmibh.org/news/presrel/pr29.htm.

57. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs, to Ambassador Miller, dated 24 August 1999 in HQ SFOR, 

Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, CG (Meigs) Signature Files, 1999.

58. Ibid., p. 2.

59. International Crisis Group, Bosnia’s November Elections: Dayton Stumbles, ICG Balkans Report No 104, 18 

December 2000. Available at http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=116.

60. Letter from General Montgomery C. Meigs to Ambassador Miller, dated 24 August 1999, p. 3.

61. Ibid.

62. MEMORANDUM, [SUBJECT] Meeting of COMSFOR with Tripartite President Jelavic, 20 September 1999 

dated 20 September 1999 in HQ SFOR, Office of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 

1999, September. Jelavic had tried to end run the High Representative on appointments, over which the High 

Representative had asserted a right of review, just as Jelavic had attempted to ignore COMSFOR’s authority in 

January. The result was the same, with the High Representative ordering the appointments vacated.

63. Unsigned Memorandum, SUBJECT: COMSFOR Talking Points, dated 27 September 99, HQ SFOR, Office 

of the Commander, Administrative Office, Notebook, COM LOG 1999, September.

64. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Press Advisory, 

SFOR Security Operations in Mostar Area, 14 October 1999. Available on line at http://www.nato.intsfor/advisory/ 

1999/0991014a/htm.

65. Results were presented on 17 December in two SFOR news releases. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force, 

Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Information Packet for Journalists, 17 December 1999. Available 

at http://www.nato.int/sfor/advisory/1999/p991217a.htm and, under the same title, at http://www.nato.int/sfor/sfor-atwork/opwestar/t991216a.htm. The Washington Post covered the story in R. Jeffrey Smith, “Croation Spy Web Alleged 

in Bosnia; NATO Says Zabreb Plotted to Annex Portions of Its Neighbor,” Washington Post, Friday, 17 December 

1999, p. A30.

66. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Press Release, 

17 December 1999, Information Packet for Journalists; Operation Westar Preliminary Results. Available at http:// 

www.nato.int/sfor/sfor-at-work/opwestar/t991216a.htm. 

67. HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Press Advisory, 

Update on SFOR Security Operations in Mostar Area, 15 October 1999, and HQ SFOR, Peace Stabilization Force 

Coalition Press Information Office, Tito Barracks, Press Advisory, Second Update on SFOR Security Operations in 

the Mostar Area conducted 14 October 1999, 16 October 1999. Available at http://www.nato.int/sfor/advisory/1999/

p991015a.htm and http://www.nato.int/sfor/advisory/1999/p991016a.htm. See also Comments of Maj. Jacques Pouters, 

SFOR, in Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 14 October 1999, 1140 Hours, Coalition Press Information Center, Tito 

Barracks.

68. Office of the High Representative, Press Release, “Radio-Television Republika Srpska (RTRS) News 

Summary,” 9 October 1999, 1930 hours. Available at http://www.ohr.int/issues99/p991009b.htm.

69. Response of Douglas Coffman, UNMIBH, in Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 9 November 1999, 1140 Hours, 

Coalition Press Information Center, Tito Barracks. On 7 November Federation Custom Police raided the Renner 

Market and seized 84 vehicles.

70. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Speech to the North Atlantic Council, Gen. Montgomery C. 
239

Meigs, October 20, 1999. For another record of the COM’s final perspectives see Craig R. Whitney, “Bosnia is 

Peaceful Now, but Will It Stay That Way?” The New York Times On The Web, November 17, 1999. Available at http:

//www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/bosnia-meigs.html.

241

CHAPTER 11

FIRST POST-BOSNIA COMMANDER AT USAREUR, 1998-2000

The US Army Europe (USAREUR) commander (CGUSAREUR) is a strategic leader. He 

commands a large, complex organization and makes decisions on missions and resources to 

shape his command, both for the present and for a future that will exceed his term of office. He 

takes command of an organization already moving into the future, constrained to one degree or 

another by the decisions of his predecessors, and he departs, having committed to a like extent 

his successors. His position is one of tension between the short- to mid-term requirements of the 

theater combatant commander and the mid- to long-term goals of the service department. He is 

further constrained by the immediate circumstances in which he finds himself, the conditions of 

the Atlantic alliance and in particular of the host nations Germany and Italy, and the priorities 

assigned to Europe by the US National Command Authorities. His task is finding points of 

balance between competing priorities, leveraging those that complement each other, all while 

carrying out those day-to-day responsibilities inherent in all commands, at all times, in all 

places.

When Montgomery Meigs returned to Heidelberg in October 1999, he filled the void created 

3 years earlier when General Bill Crouch departed with Headquarters Allied Land Forces, 

Central Europe (LANDCENT), for Sarajevo. Crouch had enjoyed the advantage of almost a 

year spent establishing the USAREUR programs he deemed important prior to his departure. 

He knew the command and the leadership, and they knew him. Moreover, Crouch returned to 

Heidelberg frequently for staff and command updates, as well as for brief personal respites from 

the pressures of Sarajevo. That permitted some continuity in the organization, notwithstanding 

the commander’s long absences and the pressures imposed by the Bosnia mission on all parts 

of the command. 

When General Eric Shinseki took command of USAREUR, he became, and generally 

remained, an absentee landlord. He lacked Crouch’s continuity in office; indeed, he came to 

USAREUR from The Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations in Washington, DC, and 

went straight to Bosnia. For the most part, he remained there. Hence, to a great extent, Shinseki 

turned the operation of USAREUR over to the Heidelberg leadership, particularly his deputy 

commander, the USAREUR chief of staff, and the V Corps commander. He stayed in touch 

electronically and, in March 1998, developed a formal management group called the USAREUR 

Board of Directors (BOD) to tie the leadership group together periodically. For help with the 

operation of this group, Shinseki called on Major General (Retired) William “Bill” Stofft, former 

Army Staff Director of Management and Commandant of the Army War College. Previously, 

Stofft had assisted Generals Maddox and Crouch in collecting and analyzing operational lessons 

learned and had helped design the Senior Officer Training Program that was a key part of General 

Crouch’s USAREUR senior leader development effort. Stofft brought to the BOD an unusually 

comprehensive institutional memory and no personal agenda other than the commander’s.

The BOD was an outgrowth of Stofft’s experience with a similar leadership group for former 

Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan. The USAREUR BOD was a senior commanders’ 

forum. Its membership began small and was kept small enough, even with additions, to 

permit roundtable discussion in the Keyes building dining room.1 The BOD met monthly, 

more or less as the USAREUR Commander’s cabinet. Eventually membership would include 

the commander; the deputy commanding general (DCG); chief of staff; V Corps Commander; 

Commanding General (CG), Southern European Task Force (SETAF); CG, 21st Theater Support 

Command (TSC); CG, 5th Signal Command; CG, Seventh Army Training Command; and CG, 

European Medical Command. Staff principals, the Command Sergeant Major, the V Corps 
242

Chief of Staff, and USAREUR Staff Judge Advocate attended ex officio for discussion of major 

agenda topics. The BOD was not meant to solve immediate issues between commanders. In the 

words of the instructions to new members:

the BOD is the senior forum for strategic planning and problem solving and interacts with other 

forums by providing strategic direction, policy, and guidance. The BOD seeks to focus on long-term 

thinking and planning—beyond the POM [Program Objective Memorandum], with the realization 

that near term plans and events shape our ability to shape the conditions for the future.2

Other larger leadership forums met less frequently (quarterly or less) to address agendas 

developed by the BOD and to provide feedback.3 These larger conferences gave the commander 

the opportunity to interact with subordinates and their spouses two or three levels down. In 

addition, General Meigs instituted a series of BOD-related staff rides, also run by General Stofft, 

“to enhance team building, executive development, and further accomplishment of his vision 

for the command.”4 Besides senior commanders, Meigs invited key outsiders, congressmen, 

journalists, and allied officials to attend these 2- or 3-day historical studies as part of his larger 

program to redefine USAREUR to a broader, influential external audience. Meigs, a natural 

teacher and gifted historian, used these events to mentor and develop his subordinates and 

to broaden their horizons. In addition to historical readings, he frequently passed on books 

about leadership and corporate management. He issued senior leaders in USAREUR a book 

on leadership by the former Miami Dolphins head coach Don Shula5, and he brought Shula 

to Europe to speak to a Senior Leaders Conference. He had his principal leaders read INTEL 

Corporation Chairman Andrew S. Grove’s management text, Only the Paranoid Survive, from 

which Meigs adopted the notion of the strategic inflection point as a device to explain the 

importance of fundamental change to USAREUR6 (to be discussed in detail below). He also 

issued to BOD members Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital; Dorthy Denning’s Information 

Warfare and Security; Clayton M. Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause 

Great Firms to Fail; and Larry Downes, Chunka Mui, and Nicholas Negroponte’s Unleashing the 

Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance.7

During Shinseki’s tenure, USAREUR was committed to support of Balkan operations and 

using whatever leftover energy there was to involvement in NATO’s engagement programs. 

Shinseki thought about the future of USAREUR, too, and toward the end of his command tour, 

he had John Drinkwater and the International Operations Directorate develop a family of draft 

strategy documents for the command. The first was a single-page statement titled USAREUR 

XXI, A Vision for the 21st Century. Meigs found the Vision Document ready for promulgation 

when he assumed command in November 1998. Meigs adopted Shinseki’s vision--or rather (as 

he would often insist to the BOD) the USAREUR leadership’s vision--as his. At his first Senior 

Leader’s Conference (SLC), a week after he took command, in a briefing designed to provide 

his command philosophy to subordinate leaders, he began to give the base document his own 

spin.8 It became the reference point for his tour of duty and the foundation of his vision of what 

USAREUR should become. A second longer strategy document, USAREUR Strategy XXI; A 

Roadmap for the 21st Century, which Drinkwater presented at the September BOD, continued to 

be revised. It was briefed to the CINCEUR in January 1999 and published in April.9 The strategy 

document was nine pages long and provided substance to the Vision Document. Among other 

things, it provided for identifying the USAREUR Mission Essential Task List, becoming a 

power-projection force and deployment platform (an undertaking to prepare immediate ready 

force packages trained and equipped for rapid deployment), and serving as a focused test bed 

for appropriate Army developmental systems. The vision documents provided a bridge of 

continuity from Shinseki to Meigs, though Meigs added even greater continuity based on his 
243

own experience through most of the decade.

It is unlikely that there was a better candidate for USAREUR command in the fall of 1998 

than Montgomery Meigs. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Meigs had been V Corps chief of 

staff, Commander of Seventh Army Training Command, USAREUR Deputy Chief of Staff for 

Operations (DCSOPS), and Commander of the 3d (later 1st) Infantry Division in Germany and 

Bosnia. He had been out of Europe for somewhat less than a year-and-a-half. In the summer 

of 1998, Meigs was announced as the Army Vice Chief of Staff designee, to succeed General 

Crouch. Instead, Meigs returned to Europe firmly grounded in the revolutionary technical 

possibilities under study and testing by the Army in the United States, thanks to his Combined 

Armed Center (CAC) command at Fort Leavenworth.10 And he was still current on the issues 

that had occupied USAREUR since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, Meigs had been intimately 

involved in most decisions of any consequence to the Europe-based Army of that time. For the 

most part, the issues confronting the command remained those he had addressed before, and he 

was well versed in the available alternatives. This background provided a firm basis for seizing 

new opportunities as they presented themselves during the shifting circumstances of alliance, 

United States, and service politics.

Initially, Lieutenant General Robert Coffey seconded Meigs in Heidelberg. Major General B. 

B. Bell was USAREUR Chief of Staff. Coffey had come to Europe as chief of staff, and then was 

promoted to Deputy Commander. Bell, who was General H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s executive 

officer in the Gulf War, came to Europe in 1995 to serve as Meigs’ assistant division commander 

in the 3d Infantry Division. He was seconded almost immediately to serve as John Abrams’ 

principal deputy for training the 1st Armored Division for the Balkans, then again to be chief 

of staff at USAREUR (Forward). Bell then became USAREUR DCSOPS, and subsequently 

USAREUR chief of staff before Meigs returned to Europe. Major General Dave McKiernan 

succeeded Bell as DCSOPS. McKiernan had served with the Allied Command Europe (ACE) 

Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) after John Sylvester. Subsequent to his tour as USAREUR 

DCSOPS, he would command the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. The heart of the 

USAREUR staff bench on which Meigs relied was strong from the start. 

The V Corps commander when Meigs took command of USAREUR was Lieutenant General 

Jay Hendrix. Hendrix had been Meigs’ superior when Meigs was a brigade commander in the 

1st Armored Division during the Gulf War, and his was a very different personality, strongwilled and direct. Moreover, although Hendrix can be personally considerate and charming, 

his relationship with his newly returned former subordinate, now commander, was often tense; 

his relationship with Meigs’ deputies left behind in Germany was even more so. This was 

especially true when Hendrix believed he saw the way ahead for the corps and thought he was 

inhibited by the headquarters across the parade field. Hendrix commanded Task Force Hawk in 

extremely difficult circumstances during its deployment to Albania and, in November 2000, left 

Europe to assume command of the Army’s Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Georgia. 

Meigs adopted the BOD structure and a tripartite vision of USAREUR command that 

Shinseki had envisioned. USAREUR command was seen to encompass three broad mission 

areas, the inherent responsibilities to lead and shape USAREUR, and the two integral missions, 

to strengthen the EUCOM joint and combined team and to help move the Army into the 21st 

century. One can easily assign the five USAREUR Imperatives of the Vision Document under 

these three headings. 

These are not mutually exclusive or entirely competitive missions. To be an agent of change 

for the Army can involve increasing the capabilities available to the theater commander, while 

creating force projection skills can make army forces more attractive, not just to one combatant 

commander but to others to whom Europe-based forces might be assigned in contingencies. 

Such improvements should in turn make the Army’s position at the annual budget negotiations 
244

more persuasive. Of course, all initiatives are not complementary, and the Army service 

component commander must sometimes argue against his service when it feels it must sacrifice 

current capabilities to invest in future promise. The need to balance these functions--the 

sometimes competing, sometimes complementary requirements of CINC and the service Chief 

of Staff--and the need to address the challenges of a forward-stationed unit in a foreign host 

nation, defined the context in which Monty Meigs had to operate as USAREUR Commander, 

first simultaneously with his year as Commander, Stabilization Force (COMSFOR), then as 

USAREUR Commander restored to Heidelberg as the first “post-Bosnia” CG USAREUR.

During his first year in command, General Meigs drew on the resources of USAREUR, 

much like his predecessors, to support operations in the Balkans, first in Bosnia and then in the 

Kosovo war and the subsequent occupation of that entity’s territory. With regard to addressing 

the future of Army forces in Europe, he began by organizing the USAREUR leadership around 

a common vision or purpose. This chapter describes the USAREUR Commander’s vision and 

how he and his principal assistants went about realizing it, particularly in the year after Monty 

Meigs returned to the Central Region.

In his SLC briefing in November 1998, General Meigs struck a number of themes. First 

and foremost was the necessity to respond to dramatic environmental change. He pointed out 

that the world USAREUR found itself in 1998 was quite different from that 9 years before. He 

acknowledged that the Army was busier than ever and under-resourced for its many tasks. The 

nature of decisionmaking was changing dramatically, from a linear to a multi-input process, and 

practices and structures would have to change accordingly. As noted previously, USAREUR 

had arrived at a strategic inflection point. To accommodate to the necessity for change, Meigs 

began to emphasize leadership philosophy, the need for clear standards, a focus on the team, 

predictability for the soldiers and their families, and the importance of adherence to doctrine. 

Then he introduced the USAREUR Vision, as yet only a one-page document containing a Vision 

Statement, a description of “Today’s Reality” and “Enduring Priorities,” and five “Imperatives 

of the Vision.” Finally, he laid down a five-phase process by which the vision was to be 

implemented. USAREUR was, he said, currently in Phase II, in which the command would have 

to address the tough questions about future strategy, structure, stationing, and sustainment. 

In conjunction with the SLC, General Meigs also held a meeting of the BOD, essentially 

to recommit to the BOD process with the membership and define the place of the BOD in 

USAREUR leadership structures.11 General Meigs returned to Germany to chair BODs almost 

monthly, even during the war in Kosovo. Major discussion topics from December 1998 to 

July 1999 included the wording of the USAREUR Strategy Document, contingency movement 

planning, command and control, and unit restationing as a move to generate cost savings (or 

avoidance) and to better posture USAREUR forces for their post-Cold War strategic missions. In 

February 1999, there was mention of an initiative to create a heavy ready company, an integral 

feature of the developing strategy document that called for development of a Europe-based 

rapid deployment force.12

By 1998, the collective leadership of the Army in Europe was well aware that the USAREUR 

mission had changed from forward defense of Europe to the generation and deployment of 

trained and ready task-organized teams, both within the EUCOM area of responsibility (AOR) 

and beyond. General Maddox had recognized that while he continued downsizing in the early 

1990s. Generals Crouch and Shinseki had known it, though they were increasingly preoccupied 

with the Balkan mission within the EUCOM AOR. In retrospect, in the absence of a full-time 

commander in the Keyes Building, it seems the four-star command had had limited ability to 

harmonize the future-oriented actions of its subordinate commands in posturing themselves for 

the long-term or to incorporate their requirements into Department of Defense (DoD) resourcing 
245

cycles. 

After commanders took care of immediate priorities, the time and energy remaining for 

them to pursue long-term projects was decidedly limited, though there always was identifiable 

progress. For example, in his exit interview with the V Corps historian, General Hendrix 

expressed well-earned pride for the Corps’ role in initiatives to improve its ability to conduct 

strategic deployments. One of the most important begun by V Corps under General Shinseki, 

he said, was a joint effort with Major General Charles S. Mahan, commander 21st TSC, to create 

a standing USAREUR Deployment Processing Center (DPC) near Ramstein Air Base where 

units could marshal while preparing for air movement.13 V Corps also worked to create a heavy 

immediate ready company (HIRC) to lead the deployment effort. Hendrix went on to observe, 

however, that these initiatives once begun were hard to sustain because the unit’s attention was 

drawn to more immediate tasks.14 One must balance these important accomplishments against 

the fact that at the time of the Kosovo deployment, 4 years after the difficult deployment to 

Bosnia, and 9 years after the movement to the Gulf War, the V Corps staff still employed only 

one full-time Joint Operation Planning and Execution (JOPES) system operator to accomplish 

the technical task of entering unit data into the complex and user-unfriendly JOPES system on 

which any strategic deployment ultimately depended. The one operator would be increased to 

eight some months after the dispatch of Task Force Hawk.15 Good work was being done, but 

the moral weight of a full-time USAREUR commander was required for the comprehensive 

and sustained commandwide effort that would be necessary to convert individual momentary 

initiatives into permanent fundamental change.

In January 1999, General Meigs was engaged in Bosnia confronting the illegal appointment 

of Croat general officers. In the Republika Srpska (RS) the constitutional impasse instigated 

by President Poplasen bubbled on. The High Representative issued his ruling on Civilian 

Command of the Armed Forces on 20 February, the crisis with the president began on 3 

March, and Roberts Owen issued his final decision on Brcko on 5 March. From the standpoint 

of USAREUR, however, the real crisis was developing further to the south. USAREUR was 

quickly becoming engaged not only in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) province of 

Kosovo, but in Macedonia as well. 

The situation began to heat up again soon after the new year dawned.16 In the last days of 

January 1999, General Meigs took time off from his schedule in Bosnia for leave. He cut his brief 

reprieve from Balkan concerns short to rush back to Heidelberg to oversee a crash planning drill 

to develop a plan for a possible intervention force in Kosovo. Meigs had learned that General 

Clark was designing his own 4,000-man intervention force, and as USAREUR Commander 

he wanted to get ahead of his boss to ensure the quality of the detailed troop-to-task force 

planning that only a service component could provide. Experience had shown that this was 

particularly important from the standpoint of providing for so-called “enablers,” detachments 

necessary for the action of smaller forces operating outside their normal parent structures. 

USAREUR had built up a good deal of experience working with enablers since Task Force Eagle 

deployed to Bosnia in 1995. In situations involving imposition of arbitrary force caps, their early 

consideration was essential.

On 13 February 1999, President Clinton announced US willingness to participate in a NATOled Kosovo Force (KFOR) predicated on a mutually agreed ceasefire between the parties. A 

number of days then intervened before USAREUR, in particular V Corps, was authorized to 

begin preparing the affected units for deployment.17 From that point on, efforts in USAREUR 

and particularly in V Corps would focus increasingly on Kosovo, for deployment of the US 

brigade-sized contribution called Task Force Falcon to KFOR, through Thessaloníki, Greece, to 

Macedonia. More problematically, such efforts would also focus on the organization, training, 

and deployment of the aviation-based Task Force Hawk to Albania.18 Task Force Able Sentry 
246

was closed out in Macedonia in February when the Chinese delegation to the Security Council 

blocked continuation of the UN Preventive Deployment (UNPREDEP) Force. The cavalry 

squadron in Macedonia at the time became Task Force Saber and assumed missions in conjunction 

with the growing KFOR. Three of its soldiers were seized by Serb forces inside Macedonia on 1 

April. The three were held as the only US prisoners of the Kosovo war. Meanwhile, USAREUR 

supported ongoing operations in Bosnia, including preparing subsequent Task Force Eagle 

rotations. While all that was going on, in both Bosnia and the Central Region, General Meigs on 

5 March had to interject himself personally into a NATO diplomatic flap between V Corps and 

LANDCENT over the lack of US support for routine NATO training missions.19 The NATO air 

war over Kosovo and Serbia began on 24 March and continued until 9 June.

When the war in Kosovo ended, the leadership of Meigs’ USAREUR staff was in flux. The 

old team was moving out, and the new team, Lieutenant General Larry Jordan, Major General 

Hondo Campbell, and Brigadier General (P) John “Rusty” Casey (as DCSOPS) were coming on 

board. Meigs was fortunate in all three assignments, particularly the top two. Lieutenant General 

Larry Jordan was assigned as DCG to succeed Bob Coffey, who retired after a distinguished 

career. Like Meigs, Jordan had taught American History at West Point. As a major general, 

Jordan commanded the Armor Center at Fort Knox, and then was appointed The Inspector 

General of the Army. The Inspector General is involved in the monitoring and checking of every 

system in the Army, in short, in knowing how the Army is supposed to run and checking to see 

that it is doing so. Larry Jordan was a colleague who brought to the Deputy Commander’s office 

both a strong understanding of the departmental bureaucracy and an equally strong tactical 

savvy that allowed him to second the commander in almost any capacity.

For his part, Hondo Campbell was a perfect complement to a commander who is essentially 

an “outside guy.” Campbell had an extraordinary career. Commissioned in the Armor branch 

in 1970, he volunteered for Special Forces and commanded an “A” Detachment in Vietnam. 

He returned to armor assignments at Fort Hood and in Germany, commanding an armored 

battalion in Germany and serving as senior task force observer/controller at Hohenfels Combat 

Maneuver Training Center (CMTC) when Meigs commanded the Seventh Army Training 

Command. Thereafter, Campbell commanded a brigade of the 2d Infantry Division in Korea. 

Subsequently he served as chief of staff of the 2d Infantry Division, assistant division commander 

of the 1st Cavalry Division, chief of staff of I Corps and Fort Lewis, and deputy commander, 

Third Army, the Army service component command of US Central Command.

Hondo Campbell is the master of managing dynamic, complex systems. As chief of staff, 

he assumed the mission of acting as the CG’s executive sponsor for change. He organized the 

USAREUR staff in a cross-functional planning effort, called the Vision Implementation Process, 

to follow up the issuance of Vision documents with production of detailed plans and their 

integration into the Army budget cycle. The goal, articulated by General Meigs in one of his 

first addresses to USAREUR leaders, was to ensure that the strategic vision would gain both 

the detailed resolution and programmatics required to achieve fruition.20 Hondo Campbell 

was precisely the right officer to translate Meigs’ priorities into action plans, instructions, and 

follow-up. Meigs and Campbell formed one of the great commander-chief of staff teams that 

the Army sometimes achieves quite by accident. 

In the conduct of the war in Kosovo, the Army suffered a significant black eye from the 

widespread public perception that USAREUR had been unable to move a small force of 24 

helicopters to Albania, or commit them in the war in Kosovo.21 On the 22 June 1999, General 

Shinseki, Meigs’ predecessor in USAREUR and Stabilization Force (SFOR), was sworn in as the 

new Army Chief of Staff. Shinseki came to office committed to transform the Army from an 

aging heavy-light force, largely unchanged since the Gulf War, to a new mixed force of heavy, 

light, and medium-weight units more suitable for the rapid strategic deployments that had 
247

marked the military interventions of the mid- and late-1990s.22 These two events, fall-out from 

what many perceived to be the Task Force Hawk “fiasco” and Shinseki’s appointment, were 

decisive for the direction Meigs would begin to take the Europe-based Army once the Kosovo 

operations stabilized.

Task Force Hawk, the aviation task force formed around two squadrons of AH-64 Apache 

helicopters sent to Albania from V Corps but never committed to the war in Kosovo, was a 

terrible public affairs failure for the US Army. Immediate expectations were raised that the 

Army’s wonder weapon from the Gulf War, the AH-64 Apache, was being committed by General 

Wesley Clark to smite the Serb ground forces that proved so resistant to high-altitude bombing 

by NATO. Then there was what seemed like a long delay of their arrival.23 Once on site, they 

were seen deliberately going about the business of training against the backdrop of an air war 

increasingly frustrating by its lack of resolution as the weeks of high altitude bombing turned 

into months.24 In the end, NATO turned its air attacks against Serbia proper, attempting to 

undermine the morale of the Serb governing class and the comfort of the population of Belgrade 

as a means of influencing the actions of the Serb Army in Kosovo. An offensive by the Kosovo 

Liberation Army out of Albania changed the geometry of the battlefield sufficiently to force the 

Serb Army to come out of hiding and expose itself to air bombardment. The war ended in June 

with Task Force Hawk still uncommitted.25 The public postwar assessment by the Army’s own 

Secretary was damning: “Task Force Hawk is a useful metaphor for the Army and why we need 

to transition to a lighter, more agile force. . . . I use it to talk to senior leaders about whether the 

Army was willing and able to get into the fight.”26

As a summary of perceptions, the Secretary’s comments reflected a truth-on-the-street 

that would energize and focus a broad Army transformation effort long overdue by the time 

General Shinseki became Chief of Staff.27 However, the Secretary’s summation glossed over 

the consequences of a series of complex strategic choices, both at the time28 and antecedent to 

the war in Kosovo,29 contingent complications that resulted,30 and Pentagon and intraservice 

politics having to do with a general lack of confidence by Washington military leaders in the 

operational judgment of the US Commander in Chief in Europe.31 The simple explanation of 

a force too heavy for rapid deployment also masked serious weaknesses in the Army aviation 

community in terms of doctrine, individual training, leader development, pilot acquisition, 

retention and collective training, and aviation-system equipment. The absence of necessary 

radios and pilot familiarity with routine procedures for integrating Army aviation into a joint air 

offensive were particularly telling. These shortcomings surfaced when a critical e-mail memo 

from Brigadier General Richard Cody, leader of the Apache strike that opened the Gulf War and 

deputy commander of Task Force Hawk, was leaked to the press.32 Consequent to publication 

of the Cody e-mail, General Cody and Colonel Ollie Hunter, commander of the 11th Aviation 

Regiment, testified before Congress on the issues raised by General Cody.33 Task Force Hawk 

remained an acute public embarrassment for the Army, though for a service seeking additional 

funding for long-term transformation this public version was not without value as evidence of 

need.

The formation and deployment of Task Force Hawk was a USAREUR, particularly a 

V Corps, operation conducted while the USAREUR Commander was well-occupied as 

COMSFOR, working to keep a lid on war-related unrest in Bosnia. Task Force Hawk remained 

under USAREUR operational command from the initiation of planning on 20 March, 4 days 

before the start of the air war over Kosovo and Serbia, until 7 May, when it was placed under 

operational control of Admiral James Ellis’s US Joint Task Force (JTF) Noble Anvil.34 Afterward, 

USAREUR retained its normal responsibilities for support (administrative control) under Title 

10. Formation, training, preparation, deployment, and initial operations in Albania, were all 

conducted under the operational authority of General Meigs, acting through his USAREUR 
248

staff and the V Corps commander, Lieutenant General Hendrix, under instructions of General 

Clark as Commander in Chief, US European Command. V Corps, as Europe’s only executive 

headquarters, found itself pulled in several directions by the generally incongruent requirements 

for Task Force Falcon (peacekeeping), Task Force Hawk (operational employment of combat 

aviation), and preparations for other possible combat missions related to the war. At the end of 

the air war, Task Force Hawk was able to serve as a ready source of units poised for immediate 

transfer to Task Force Falcon in Macedonia and Kosovo.

Following the war, Meigs evaluated the Task Force Hawk experience with his staff, V Corps, 

and the aviators who had been at the center of the operation. He proceeded on two tracks, first 

to address the shortcomings which the experience plus its after action review (AAR) process 

revealed, and second to correct the public view of a ponderous Army unable to deploy and 

unwilling to fight. On the second track, General Meigs sought to explain the difficulties of the 

initial deployment to various audiences and to make the important point that Task Force Hawk 

was prepared for transfer of authority (TOA) in Albania on the date specified by the EUCOM 

commander.35 The principal themes Meigs addressed in his public presentation were the adverse 

consequences for execution of the Hawk mission that resulted from political limitations like the 

Roberts Amendment;36 the effect of diplomatic obstacles, such as the Macedonian decision to 

deny their territory as a base for offensive operations against Serbia (as originally planned) and 

Italian reluctance to allow the arming of the Apache force in the Italian staging area; the difficult 

Hawk flight route from Germany to Albania imposed by the need to get overflight rights (in 

contrast to the movement of Implementation Force [IFOR] that intervened by invitation); 

effects of weather on helicopter self-deployment; limitations of the Albanian base that had to 

be employed when Macedonia demurred; and difficulties of the flight profile the mission of 

fighting from the Albanian base demanded. It was made clear that at no time had the Air Force 

airlift sorties been delayed waiting for Army troop loads, and that Task Force Hawk had been 

ready for employment on the date specified by the theater commander. 

That said, close examination of the Army’s aviation capabilities during the AAR process 

convinced General Meigs that his service was selling an operational capability it did not in 

fact possess (independent deep strike attack aviation). Moreover, the Hawk experience, plus 

subsequent mechanical and airframe problems within the USAREUR Apache fleet, convinced 

Meigs that the system itself was not reliable. Meigs left the V Corps AAR convinced he had 

a moral obligation to the aviators of Task Force Hawk to remedy the shortcomings identified. 37 

Motivated also by his belief that the Army should either provide the declared capability to the 

theater commander or admit it could not, Meigs began an effort to upgrade USAREUR and 

Army aviation in a manner that would mark his command.38

The task Meigs took on was bigger than that sanctioned by his formal span of control at 

USAREUR. Many of the weakness that were exposed in the Task Force Hawk expderience, 

particularly as documented in General Cody’s memorandum, were systemic, the result of earlier 

Army force structure and acquisition decisions made with a view to stretching out expenditures 

which essentially suboptimized corps-level aviation for use within the forward line of troops. 

The unspoken assumption was that distant operations would fall to others. Meigs’ problem 

was made more difficult because, in spite of the ongoing Balkan missions, Europe was still 

seen as an economy-of-force theater without a likely major regional conflict. Therefore, the 

command suffered a relatively low priority of aviation fill (and priority for parts), even with 

troops involved daily in operations in the Balkans. Moreover, the institutional responsibility 

for Army aviation doctrine and materiel acquisition belonged to two other MACOMs, doctrine 

to the Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, and acquisition to the Army Materiel 

Command (AMC) in Washington, DC. Both had their own priorities and long-term programs. 
249

Any corrective work to satisfy immediate operational requirements was bound to be perceived 

as an interruption. This was particularly true with AMC, which had an expensive helicopter 

acquisition program in progress. This program called for progressive upgrading of the Apache 

fleet with an interim system called Longbow, plus a Comanche system that was still in long-term 

development. There was little incentive at department level to shift funds from these programs 

to fix immediate shortfalls in systems rapidly becoming obsolescent. Still, the Army formed an 

aviation task force to study the problems under supervision of the Vice Chief of Staff, General 

John Keene, a former commander of the 101st Airborne Division and XVIII Corps. General 

Meigs set out to provide to Keene, in whom he found a sympathetic ally, all the information and 

moral impetus he could muster.

The Task Force Hawk AAR produced more than 100 suggestions for improvement that 

Meigs set about seeking to achieve.39 These involved specified improvement in crew and unit 

training, materiel improvements of the forces he had in Europe, and aggressive pursuit of longterm materiel fixes he could only try to sell to his parent department. Among the initiatives he 

undertook in Europe were acquisition of in-line fuel tanks to enhance flight profile, weapon 

space, and airframe stability; purchase of night vision goggles for aviators to use in conjunction 

with on-board forward-looking infrared (FLIR) devices; initiation of a program of enhanced 

training for USAREUR aviators to increase skill in difficult long duration high-altitude flight; 

and an emphasis on collective training for attack helicopter units in addition to individual crew 

gunnery. 

This collective training, in turn, required collateral initiatives to export such training to new 

NATO member states.40 This contributed to a more robust and mutually beneficial NATO 

exercise program. The new NATO partners (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic) were less 

restrictive on military aviation training, particularly at night, than the German authorities, who 

grew increasingly unwilling to support military activities that proved irritating to a newly 

secure and peace-conscious electorate. Meigs also sought to remedy what he saw as a systemic 

failure--the Army Battle Command Training Program’s penchant for portraying the Apache as 

a wonder weapon, invulnerable to air defense threats on the battlefield. He obviously felt the 

Army leadership had begun to believe its own propaganda.41 V Corps was tasked to produce 

a white paper on Army aviation, and Meigs required frequent updates of progress made in 

correcting the various Hawk shortcomings. Meigs also dispatched a series of messages to the 

Vice Chief of Staff urging strong action to remedy a situation he, Meigs, saw as much as a failure 

of institutional integrity as organizational weakness.

In USAREUR, General Meigs and more particularly Lieutenant General James C. Riley, 

the new corps commander, saw to the improvement of the collective training of the V Corps 

attack aviation force. Through a series of high level meetings and exchanges, Meigs worked 

to correct what he saw as a failure on the part of the institutional Army to work out doctrinal 

problems with the Air Force in integrating attack aviation into a complex ongoing air 

campaign. The USAREUR/V Corps effort culminated in a combined US-Polish field training 

exercise, Exercise Victory Strike, in October 2000. The exercise scenario imitated the design 

and mission of Task Force Hawk. By the time Victory Strike took place, AH-64s assigned to 

the 11th Aviation Regiment were installing internal fuel tanks and had received necessary fire 

control modifications to accommodate flachette rockets for self-defense against man-portable 

air defense systems. Apache crews had been issued night vision goggles and various pieces 

of survival gear, and they had been trained in the sort of over-water and high altitude flying 

that had proved so difficult in Albania the year before. Writing to CGUSAREUR from Poland, 

the V Corps G3/Exercise Director reported that the Apache squadrons were flying day and 

night missions with flight routes in excess of 150 kilometers, using forward air refuel points on 

return to extend total mission range, exercising downed aircraft recovery teams (DART), and 
250

practicing airborne command and control enroute.42 Symbolic of the importance attached to 

this “capstone” aviation exercise, General Meigs went to Poland in October rather than back 

to Washington to attend the annual Association of the US Army Conference that serves as the 

Army Chief of Staff’s opportunity to issue his public State of the Army report to the military and 

civilian defense community. The real benefit of Victory Strike was its content as an aviationcentered exercise requiring USAREUR attack aviation units to perform independently as a 

separate maneuver arm, not simply as a fire support adjunct to ground maneuver units. By 

the year following Task Force Hawk, USAREUR and V Corps had made significant progress 

developing the mission capabilities that had been demanded without warning by the Supreme 

Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) the year before. USAREUR had also expended great 

effort to pass on to the larger Army the lessons learned at such cost in Albania in the spring of 

1999.

The post-Kosovo aviation initiatives were only among the most prominent of the USAREUR 

Commander’s efforts to establish, or reestablish, USAREUR as an essential member of the 

EUCOM joint team and as a player in the Army Chief of Staff’s transformation initiatives, 

particularly as the temperature of the Balkan situation slowly retreated from the sharp spike 

of the Kosovo war. Of course, events continued to be unsettled, and even threatening: the 

general fear that FRY President Milosevic might start another crisis in Montenegro to bolster 

his declining political standing; the transformation of Balkan politics with the 10 December 

1999 death of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman; and Milosevic’s fall from power in the fall of 

2000. (Shortly after Milosevic’s fall, Bosniac Tri-President Alija Izetbegovic stepped down, thus 

completing the exit of the three remaining wartime nationalist leaders.) 

The change of command at SHAPE and EUCOM in April 2000 from Army General Wesley 

Clark to Air Force General Joseph Ralston symbolized a shift of focus away from the Balkans 

and back to a broader vision of US interests in Europe and Africa. Indeed, General Ralston was 

said to have observed at an early meeting, perhaps apocryphally, that he was not sent to Europe 

to be commander in chief of the Balkans, a reference to his predecessor’s (and perhaps NATO’s) 

recent obsession with Balkan affairs.

Army transformation represented a challenge. General Shinseki was hard pressed to find 

funding for his transformation efforts within the tight budget program he inherited from 

his predecessor, General Dennis Reimer. The forces left in Europe represented part of what 

was called the legacy force, Cold and Gulf War era heavy forces that constituted the present 

warfighting capability. Their need for recapitalization due to post-Cold War neglect, however, 

represented at some point competition for future transformation capital. To the extent that V 

Corps had lost its priority as a Middle East contingency force while it focused on the Balkans, 

Europe had lost priority in the scramble for department investment dollars. Meigs thus knew 

that to make Europe helpful he had to articulate a vision of a new flexible and adaptable Europebased Army--one that was immediately available to the theater commander in chief as a source 

of ready combat forces; more rapidly deployable to Central Command than CONUS-based 

alternatives; and, if possible, more attractive to the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of a more efficient 

transportation profile that would not require a heavy investment in national strategic lift. The 

first role still required both a corps headquarters and more rapidly deployable nonmajor theater 

of war (MTW) force packages. The second role meant investment in heavy force deployability, 

and the third meant exploring means to place the smallest possible demand on air and sea 

strategic lift platforms. 

To obtain departmental support, Meigs had to show the Chief of Staff that the legacy force 

could both meet the Chief’s declared deployment target of a brigade in 96 hours and, perhaps 

more importantly, serve as a test bed for selected evolving systems, particularly digitized 
251

command and control that could be embedded in fielded systems and tested in ongoing 

operations. In addition, given the Chief’s need for transformation investment capital, any 

changes in USAREUR would have to be underwritten mainly by cost avoidance within existing 

budgets. All this could likely be pulled together within the evolving USAREUR Vision and 

Strategy formulations. Indeed, between the ending of the war in Kosovo and the first visit 

to Europe by the new Army Chief of Staff in December, Meigs’ ambitious program was well 

underway.

When Shinseki came to USAREUR, Meigs briefed him “on where USAREUR is nested in 

the Army’s New Vision,” providing specific examples of where USAREUR could help the 

Army achieve the Vision.43 The briefing focused on improvements USAREUR had in train to 

upgrade the strategic mobility of Europe-based forces, putting them in tune with the Chief of 

Staff’s goal of being able to put a combat capable brigade any place in the world in 96 hours. 

Meigs told Shinseki that he had accepted this mission for USAREUR’s legacy forces. USAREUR 

had proven the utility of the DPC during Task Force Hawk in April. It had rewritten its 

deployment standing operating procedure to provide a single source reference for deployment 

responsibilities and standards, and it had just validated a concept for a Heavy Immediate Ready 

Company (HIRC) in October. 

The HIRC was a heavy company-sized force package designed to be part of a two-battalion 

(mixed heavy/light) brigade task force capable of deployment within the Chief’s 96-hour 

time window. For lesser in-theater contingencies, the guts of the task force would eventually 

become a two airborne infantry battalion 173d Airborne Brigade, motorized with high mobility 

multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs) under the Italy-based SETAF. To fill out the 

brigade, USAREUR would find the spaces for a second airborne battalion internally, equip the 

standing battalion first and eventually its partner with HMMWVs for mobility, and create a set 

of special purpose deployable force packages as brigade enablers--scouts, military police, and 

engineers. Thinking through the possible permutations of various heavy and light components 

of the brigade-sized immediate ready force served two functions for the USAREUR leadership. 

First, it enabled the USAREUR commander to get his senior leadership to think in new ways 

about an old problem, to break the paradigm, as it were, of more or less standard brigade combat 

teams that might be useful against one threat but too slow or too weak against another. Second, 

the process enabled the service component to develop an array of modular capabilities of heavy 

and light forces that could be rapidly task-organized, depending on the mission requirements, 

and rapidly deployed in the theater or beyond.

To better address the command and control component of any CINCEUR crisis response 

missions, USAREUR and V Corps had also undertaken a program to create small modular 

headquarters. V Corps had worked for some time to bring its old Cold War headquarters 

housed in expando vans into an almost all C-130 transportable flyaway headquarters, housed 

in inflatable shelters. At Meigs’ suggestion, the corps headquarters also explored modifying 

its mission profile to include operations as a joint land component commander’s (JLCC) 

headquarters, though this met some resistance from Department of the Army (DA), which 

preferred that such a mission devolve on the service component rather than the corps. SETAF 

was forming itself into a flyaway land-focused nucleus for a JTF headquarters onto which a 

commander of seniority appropriate to the assigned mission could be grafted.44 Meigs also 

emphasized the importance of his aviation training strategy to address many of the operational 

problems observed in Task Force Hawk and USAREUR’s program of no-notice deployment 

exercises to increase the speed of future mission response. He also made a case for eventually 

incorporating two new interim brigades into the USAREUR force structure.

These initiatives, briefed to the Army Chief of Staff, were the key beginnings made during 

General Meigs’ first year in command of USAREUR. Some parts had been underway before 
252

his arrival, as General Hendrix observed in his exit interview mentioned earlier. In 1999, 

subsequent to General Meigs’ arrival back in Europe, General McKiernan, the DCSOPS, had 

taken on deployability as a major task. He briefed the BOD in July 1999 on the concept for the 

DRAFT USAREUR Deployment Regulation 525-1 as an outgrowth of the Vision XXI process, 

and he handed out a draft version for review.45 The briefing laid out a family of 10 established 

lines of communication (LOCs) that would lead either to a port of embarkation for sea transport 

or overland to the Balkans. Such overland LOCs could proceed either directly through Hungary 

and, if necessary, onward via Romania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia; or indirectly through Italy and 

the Adriatic or via Thessaloníki. Pre-validating these continental LOCs was a major advance 

from the days when General Crouch had to invent an overland approach to Bosnia on the fly. 

Operational maneuver of trucks, wide-body airframes, and trains was now an established part 

of USAREUR plans.

The Commander’s expressed intent for strategic deployability was to restructure USAREUR 

as a strategic projection force “prepared to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain military 

power anywhere in the world, ready to respond across the full spectrum of operations and 

able to adapt quickly to the environment in which we operate.”46 Deployment was to be part 

of every unit’s mission essential task list, and all units were to be trained to standards and 

exercised in deployment tasks as part of their routine training. The USAREUR concept was 

based on three elements: a phased concept of operations, predetermined force packages or 

modules, and strategic platforms. A key goal was to get USAREUR out of the business of brute 

force deployments, a theme Meigs would reiterate in various forums. The key recognition, now 

formalized, was that USAREUR’s strategic edge, from a military sense, was the ability to get to 

the fight, ready for action, faster than stateside competitors and, implicitly, faster than the shipbound Marine Expeditionary Units. 

In July 1999, the CG was still thinking about the form this deployment program should take. 

He told the BOD they needed to consider the kind of alert-ready forces they wanted to maintain 

and what kind of a timeline they could operate under. Notably, since it would ultimately 

become a consideration in the deployment program, the USAREUR Engineer, Colonel (P) Steve 

Hawkins, broached the need for an integrated USAREUR Installation Master Plan. He proposed 

having one ready for briefing by February 2000. Meigs told him he needed it by September or 

October 1999. He also told the newly arrived chief of staff, Major General Campbell, to develop 

a comprehensive scheme for dealing with visitors to ensure that USAREUR themes and topics 

were deliberately reflected as part of every visit. A fundamental belief of General Meigs, one 

that he shared with his two predecessors, was that USAREUR could not wait for its message to 

get out on its own. USAREUR would have to organize itself to tell the story in a coordinated 

way. There would soon be a USAREUR process action team working on that task too. 

In August 1999, when the BOD met next, there was a new DCSOPS, Brigadier General 

John Casey. Casey had stepped up from his assignment as Seventh ATC Commander. Major 

General Mahan, the 21st TSC Commander, attended with his replacement, Major General 

Richard Hack. Major General John Cavanaugh, CG 5th Signal Command, announced an 

information command and control program called the “Balkan digitization effort.” This was an 

initiative by General Meigs based on the knowledge he had gained at Fort Leavenworth about 

the Army modernization activities at Fort Hood. It involved embedding active transmitters in 

battle area vehicles so that tactical commanders could see them displayed on a map with a precise 

location--part of what the Army calls providing a common operational picture. Meigs had found 

the funding for one developmental equipment set for Bosnia within the Department of the 

Army. General Clark found joint funds for a similar but less capable set for Task Force Falcon 

in Kosovo. General Cavanaugh and 5th Signal Command were responsible for introducing 

the system in USAREUR. The Balkan initiatives were the demonstration pieces, not just for 
253

the technology, but for USAREUR’s ability to perform field tests in ongoing missions.47 At the 

August BOD meeting, General Meigs introduced another series of undertakings that were to 

be of vital importance, that is, to enhance the US part of NATO’s engagement and enlargement 

exercise program, and also USAREUR’s force readiness, deployment training exercises, and, as 

already mentioned, attack aviation maneuver training. Meigs began to explore the feasibility of 

exporting unit training to sites in new NATO nations while keeping many of the benefits of the 

Combat Maneuver Training Center (CMTC) (Hohenfels) approach, including exportable CMTC 

quality observer-controller packages for evaluating training to standard.48 

On 10 September, General Meigs addressed the 1999 European Defense Forces Forum and 

Symposium. He listed what he saw as USAREUR’s accomplishments in the past, not least the 

sustained deployments to the Balkans, and he outlined where he saw USAREUR headed. His 

prepared remarks listed four priorities encapsulating his vision as it had then evolved: 

First, we must build on our successes in deployments all over the AOR and improve our technique. 

We’ve become masters of the brute force technique--now how can we apply technology, training, 

and talent to becoming more efficient and faster.

Second, while Mission Rehearsals are a critical asset in situations with warning, we must improve 

our steady state training of all areas so that in short or no warning scenarios tailored forces get to 

the operational area with high confidence and low operational risk.

Third, we must continue to maximize the potential of our people.

Fourth, we must be totally dedicated to getting the lessons we learn on mission back to the rest of 

the Army.49

In September at the V Corps Semiannual Training Briefing, Meigs shared additional 

thoughts with his senior commanders. He told them that, rightly or wrongly, USAREUR had a 

reputation for being “muscle bound, heavy” and unable to “deploy rapidly.”50 USAREUR had 

to compete to be part of the front-end force for any contingency, meaning that detailed mission 

rehearsal exercises, to which the Army had become devoted since the 1995 Balkans deployment, 

might have to be omitted. That required looking at the content of the annual training cycle to be 

sure it routinely covered the essentials. Deployment cells had to be better manned, particularly 

with JOPES operators, “the clerical staff that gets you credit at TRANSCOM [US Transportation 

Command].”51 Meigs warned, too, that force protection was a condition of employment, not 

an end. He criticized one of the divisions for making force protection its number one training 

priority during a Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) Warfighter exercise, complaining 

that commanders were becoming “concerned with protecting the force at the expense of 

accomplishing the mission.”52 He also sought input on how to accommodate Partnership for 

Peace (PfP) in face of the fact that they drew senior leaders away from their own troop training; 

and, similarly, how best to provide strong senior Army personnel participation in Air Force 

exercises, so as to ensure better interservice understanding. Finally, regarding aviation training, 

he said, “There is no reason why the aviation community in this Corps cannot lead the Army 

in training against air defense arrays . . . with the assets we have on hand now.” He directed 

that aviation units start training for defense against man-portable air defense systems, which 

comprised their greatest threat. In closing, he expressed his belief that the Army’s failure to 

replicate the air defense threat in BCTP exercises had convince[d] a couple of generations of 

Army leaders that [Apache] could do things that shouldn’t be done.”53

The November and December 1999 BOD meetings were significant milestones for realizing 

the USAREUR Vision. First of all, the USAREUR Commander was back in Heidelberg from 
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Sarajevo. Secondly, the BOD considered two related and defining parts of the USAREUR 

Vision. In November, a DCSOPS-led process action team, chaired by Mr. Dale Bryson, a 

civilian planner, presented a plan for drawing together the various actions addressing force 

deployability into a single conceptual package. Another process action team reported on a 

USAREUR strategy for “strategic communications,” a key part of Meigs’ effort to sell USAREUR 

to its constituent audiences. In December, the chief of staff, Major General Campbell, presented 

a comprehensive strategy to achieve the USAREUR Vision, to move it forward from what he 

saw as a stalled study phase into planning and execution. Campbell’s program, in which he was 

ably supported by Lieutenant Colonel Bob Sinkler of the Commander’s Initiatives Group and 

Mr. Jon Whitford, a civilian planner from ODCSOPS, would create an organizational process 

that combined interdisciplinary process action teams (for planning) with normal functional 

general staff alignment (for execution). The purpose was to ensure continuous movement by 

the command toward the goal of integrated planning and programmatics required to make the 

Vision effort self-sustaining.

The November BOD took place as part of an earlier senior leadership conference (SLC) at 

Garmisch. A number of general issues were discussed, some leftovers from the SLC. The two 

strategic issues were strategic communications and deployment. The heart of the first was a pair 

of slides showing the five imperatives of the USAREUR Vision alongside what were offered as 

the negative and false CONUS perceptions of USAREUR as an outdated force. The purpose of 

the Strategic Communications Group, formed under the Commanding General and led by a 

steering group chaired by the Secretary of General Staff, was to 

Build support for USAREUR. Provide a forum to share critical information among key members of 

the USAREUR staff. Synchronize efforts to result in a common shared understanding of USAREUR 

in the US Government, DoD, our Host Nations, our Allies, and our soldiers and families.54

The Communications Strategy called for each USAREUR staff agency that dealt with an 

external audience to prepare and execute a communications plan to address that audience. The 

steering group provided coherence to the total effort to bring the public perceptions and the 

reality of USAREUR in line. Just as he had been heavily involved in presenting the public face of 

SFOR in Bosnia, General Meigs intended to take to the road to explain USAREUR and its Vision 

to as many external audiences as he could manage in Europe and in CONUS.

Dale Bryson’s briefing on strategic deployment was a masterpiece of data presentation 

that brought the entire BOD up to date on the several deployment initiatives that had been 

percolating in USAREUR, sometimes independently of one another. The briefing was presented 

as a follow-up to Bryson’s July briefing already discussed. The new presentation offered a set 

of recommendations for short-, long-, and intermediate-term action that took cognizance of the 

CG’s guidance at the July BOD, the implementation of the HIRC in V Corps, the Chief of Staff 

of the Army’s vision of 96-hour deployability, and other incremental guidance received since 

July. The deployment working group was a process action team in which every interested 

headquarters staff agency and subordinate command was represented.55 The commander’s 

initial charge to the working group was to consider the requirements inherent in having a twobattalion (one heavy, one light motorized) brigade combat team operationally prepared and 

configured to conduct peace operations in theater, in 96 hours. The HIRC was to be the lead 

element of the heavy battalion. Aviation would self-deploy. A secure airfield was assumed in 

the AOR. 

On 12 October, V Corps was tasked formally to work out the nuts and bolts of the ready 

force.56 The V Corps solution, already in development, was a heavy company formed around 

two platoons of four M1 tanks and four M2 Bradley fighting vehicles. It required eight C5 or 
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C17 strategic airlifters for air deployment.57 The November USAREUR concept accepted the 

assumption of the V Corps plan calling for acquisition of a pre-positioned equipment set for 

storage at the 21st TSC DPC at Rhine Ordnance Barracks, Kaiserlautern. Thus, initially, only 

troops would have to move to the barracks, located near the aerial port of embarkation (APOE), 

Ramstein Air Force Base, 12 kilometers on the other side of town. In response to the BOD briefing, 

the USAREUR Commander instructed the Deployment Working Group and V Corps to go back 

to look at a two-battalion brigade combat team built around a cavalry squadron (minus), two 

Bradley troops, no tanks, some OH58 helicopters, the 1st Battalion, 508th Airborne Infantry from 

SETAF, and a brigade reconnaissance troop.58 The HIRC they were to examine was to consist of 

two Bradley platoons, one tank platoon, a reconnaissance platoon, a military police platoon, and 

accompanying headquarters and support.

A month later, when Meigs was briefed by V Corps at the next BOD, he observed that V 

Corps had included two M113 platoons in the immediate ready force (IRF), a move he approved 

of in principle because M113s could be transported by C130s already in Europe.59 This M113 

force, a regular Bradley company retrained to operate on demand with M113s, was designated 

the medium ready company, or MRC, and was the second company of the two-company, heavy 

IRF. USAREUR prepositioned five Bradley’s, nine M113s, two command and control packages, 

and HMMWVs for MP and scout platoons at Rhine Ordnance Barracks.60 At the end of the 

planning process, the Central Region IRF would consist of a two-platoon HIRC (one Bradley 

platoon, one Abrams platoon); the MRC (two M113 platoons); and a platoon each of scouts, 

engineers, military police, and a headquarters. The brigade combat team (BCT) consisted of this 

Central Region IRF, the 508th Airborne Infantry Battalion, a brigade headquarters from SETAF, 

and various force enablers.61 Force components were to be identified systematically, certified for 

deployment by specified mission rehearsal training at Seventh ATC, and drilled in unit recalls 

and deployment exercises. As part of the general deployment upgrade program, Seventh ATC 

updated its unit movement officer course to provide linkage with the Air Force Air Load Planner 

course. Coincidentally, while the BOD was discussing strategic deployment, the 21st TSC CG 

reported that the first rail deployment to Kosovo had arrived in Macedonia, tracked on its route 

around FRY by the Bundesbahn (German rail corporation) satellite. 

Two other important issues were discussed at the December BOD. Reviewing the briefing 

intended for General Shinseki’s imminent visit, General Meigs emphasized the importance 

of issuing 69 HMMWVs to the 508th Infantry from Italy-based war reserve stocks. He also 

discussed force structure options for increasing USAREUR flexibility and also its support to the 

CINC by providing for a fifth maneuver brigade in USAREUR, all within existing force ceilings. 

The only way forward at present, in his view, was the option of provision of a second airborne 

infantry battalion for the 173rd Airborne Brigade in SETAF, thus making that heretofore 

truncated brigade a two-battalion force. The active process to create that battalion along with 

other force enablers can properly be omitted from this discussion.62

Finally, the chief of staff, Major General Campbell, offered a briefing titled “USAREUR XXI: 

A VISION for the 21st Century: Phase II Action Plan.” Campbell was convinced that the Vision 

Process briefed in the spring had become stuck in Phase II, the study phase. Clearly there had 

been some advances. The deployment and strategic communication briefings in November 

were evidence of forward movement. Nonetheless, Campbell believed the process as a whole 

was foundering for lack of an institutional “executive sponsor” for change. The chief proposed 

to be that sponsor, and he immediately set about laying down a comprehensive process and 

identifying deliverables necessary to get the process going. 

As a matter of principle, Campbell insisted that strategic thinking had to be done by crossdisciplinary process action teams rather than vertical functional teams. He laid down a series of 

thrust lines organized according to the Phase II Vision Process categories of strategy, structure, 
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stationing, and sustainment. Each process action team might be led by an officer responsible to 

a functional staff chief with authority over the area in question, but its composition was to be 

multidisciplinary. A series of periodic back briefs by each process action team, most importantly 

the biannual briefing to the BOD, would provide the impetus to drive the process forward. 

Campbell gave the functional staff directors until March 2000 to get the process organized. In 

March, he assigned a series of deadlines concluding in 120 days that forced the process action 

teams to identify objective actions required to achieve the vision.63 Campbell intended to have 

the processes of change embedded and operating by the summer 2000 rotation period.64 

The Vision Process was essential for two reasons. First of all, while the USAREUR 

Commander was back in the Central Region full time, he was by no means sitting in Heidelberg 

attending to routine matters. In fact, from his return in October 1999 until March 2000 he was 

generally on the road. He was leading a planning process to update and validate various war 

plans in light of ongoing political instability in the Balkans and the recently announced early 

change of command of the SACEUR. Between sessions, he was back in CONUS attending 

the Army 4-star conference and addressing various forums about what was happening in 

USAREUR. The revised vision process, accepted by the BOD in December, revealed how the 

Chief of Staff took hold of the staff to institutionalize the realization of the Vision through the 

hard practical work such a broad restructuring was likely to require. The vision process bought 

time for the commander, allowing him to limit his detailed attention to a small number of key 

tasks while remaining confident that all the other essential pieces were moving in harmony 

with his lead. By summer 2000, the Chief’s efforts led to the publication of a theater plan, which 

rested on a family of subordinate plans, one for each of the thrust lines described in the vision 

documents. Moreover, the process and its periodic update briefings for the Chief of Staff and 

BOD soon produced practical progress in efforts to enhance deployability, shape USAREUR 

as a model Army service component command (joint force land component command and 

Army Force [ARFOR] capable); support reduction and modularization of headquarters; and 

pursue the commander’s aviation initiatives, Balkans digitization, rationalization of external 

exercise demands on the command, and increase SETAF motorization. On the programmatic 

side, the vision process carried forward various restationing initiatives, now called Efficient 

Basing Initiatives (East and South65), and developed plans to build a more robust 173d Airborne 

Brigade, establish alternative APOEs and strategic deployment centers closer to troop bases, 

examine strategic deployment that maximized contract sealift and tactical airlift, and maximize 

funding for various facilities renovations.

Beginning in January 2000, General Meigs began to take the USAREUR message to various 

publics in accordance with his view that USAREUR would have to accept responsibility for how 

it was perceived in the wider world. He also observed that it was useful to have more than one 

CINC as your proponent, and, relatedly, he instructed the Chief of Staff to develop a briefing 

that would show how USAREUR could get a three-brigade division and a corps slice deployed 

from Europe in 30 days without using TRANSCOM strategic platforms.66 The intent was for 

a briefing like the one he had created for General Crouch some 5 years before. By the 12th of 

the month, he had the briefing in hand, titled USAREUR: On Point For the Nation, put together 

by his Commander’s Initiatives Group. Presented several times at the Army’s Command and 

General Staff College, the briefing began with a strategic overview, an explanation of the kind of 

active engagement in which USAREUR was involved, the design training cycles, and initiatives 

to enhance strategic responsiveness. It confronted the issue of operational tempo (OPTEMPO), 

pointing out that officers headed to Europe could expect to spend 1.8 of 4 years in Europe in the 

field. It also showed that while Europe had more tank miles per year and more average flying 

hours than Forces Command, USAREUR reenlistment rates were correspondingly higher. The 

message was clear: USAREUR service offers tough realistic training, coupled with a rich and 
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exciting opportunity for families. 

A major part of the briefing, given several times by General Meigs during the first half of 

year 2000, was an overview of the Task Force Hawk mission, designed to show the adverse 

impact of the shift from a Macedonia Base (2,500 personnel) to Albania (5,000), the deployment 

timeline and progress, and the various individual causes of delay. The briefing pointed out that 

the first force package was, in fact, declared ready on the CINC’s assigned target date (24 April) 

and illustrated the complexity of the Hawk employment concept. It concluded with a snapshot 

of where USAREUR was headed, focusing on aviation training, deployability initiatives, splitbase contingency operations, and headquarters reconfiguration. 

Speaking to a more external audience, the Association of the United States Army, in February 

2000, General Meigs struck three themes. First (and it was a point he continued to hit hard to 

external audiences), he pointed to the benefit of USAREUR’s strategic location, essentially 

commending USAREUR as an Army springboard for deployments to the Middle East and 

Mediterranean rim. The briefing portrayed a contemporary environment of strategic instability 

and technological change, particularly in command and control. Employing Andy Grove’s 

Strategic Inflection Point and the historical case study of the World War II Battle of the Atlantic 

as an illustration (in later versions he would use France, 1940), Meigs argued that USAREUR’s 

challenge was one of strategic responsiveness, requiring speed, agility, and decisive power 

on the ground. In this context, USAREUR was shown to be moving forward with immediate 

ready forces, tailorable task organizations, mission rehearsals “on the fly,” adaptable/modular 

headquarters, routine joint and combined exercises, force enhancement modules, embedded 

collective training, and experienced leaders. He also discussed the Army’s loss rate for captains, 

a serious problem that spring. Essentially the same briefing was given to the Army War 

College and, with variations, to the Army-Marine Warfighter Conference and the Army Armor 

Conference, both in May. The Marine Warfighter briefing highlighted USAREUR’s ability to 

deploy a division-sized force to the Balkans in 30 days, using a combination of air, land, and 

sea avenues, while situating the support base in Italy across the Adriatic. It also depicted the 

command’s ability to deploy a three-brigade division to Southwest Asia in 29 days by air and 

sea.

The USAREUR Commander was out front selling his command, trying to alter the 

stereotypes. He was also working to shore up relationships in Germany, where he undertook 

a series of meetings with the Länder Minister Presidents who were hosts to American forces.67

The German-American relationship had been neglected during the Balkan years, and both 

the German body politic and the American Army had changed in the interim. A number of 

issues required attention at the top level, not least increasing restrictions on military training 

and difficulties with the changing relationship of defense contractors to the body of labor and 

residence law in the separate German states.

The notes from the subsequent BOD meetings show that General Meigs continued to focus 

on the objectives he had developed during his first year. During unit visits, he discussed his 

concerns over the loss of captains and his own conclusions reached after talking to captains at 

the Seventh ATC. He also observed that not only captains but colonels were leaving the Army at 

unprecedented rates, particularly logisticians, and he urged some care be taken in management 

of these senior officers as well. There was a long discussion on funding, in which the CG 

made clear his firm intention to hire information assurance and deployment specialists and his 

conviction that training, SETAF motorization, and the IRC were “must funds.”

In March 2000, the formation of the second SETAF airborne infantry battalion was a major 

topic of discussion, with the CG observing that he was not able to muster a complete airborne 

combat team but would limit his efforts to three airborne infantry companies and a battalion 

headquarters for now, along with a long-range reconnaissance unit for the brigade. SETAF itself 
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was working on an exercise in Hungary (in which General Meigs wanted to include as much of 

the IRC as was feasible) and a parachute drop in Bosnia near Bijeljina. The CG indicated that his 

chief concerns of the moment were to generate awareness in the greater Army of USAREUR’s 

initiatives in behalf of engagement; avoid surprises in the Balkans; maintain good relations with 

the DA and EUCOM; track readiness; and attend to USAREUR’s part in national strategy.68

In May, the BOD held a mid-year resource review reflecting concern over two main issues. 

In the near term, Task Force Falcon had been de-funded from the annual budget, and Congress 

had not passed a supplemental appropriation for Kosovo. This would be a source of worry 

until the supplemental appropriation was finally passed in July. The USAREUR commander 

was forced to confront the possibility that he might literally be out of money sometime by midyear, and he set his resource managers to pinning down exactly when that would be. Over the 

long term, there was a more serious problem consequent to a DA decision to manage repair 

parts from a central single stock fund. Heretofore, theater army materiel maintenance had been 

managed locally, and as a result the command was rewarded for efficiencies with funds it could 

then use for other purposes. The single stock fund meant that hereafter the department would 

retain any such cost avoidance residue, meaning that the major commands would lose a major 

source of “opportunity money.” This would continue to be a major source of angst as USAREUR 

tried to transform itself with no additional funding.69

In June, General Meigs finally had the opportunity to introduce the command to the new 

SACEUR/CINCEUR, General Ralston. In August, Meigs would extend a similar introduction 

on behalf of the new Deputy Commander in Chief, General (USMC) Carlton J. Fulford. These 

were critical opportunities to explain USAREUR to its most important potential customer, and 

the briefings reflected that. What was USAREUR offering? The product was strategically 

responsive, trained, and agile forces. Examples were the SETAF force dispatched in 1994 to 

Rwanda under the then USAREUR DCINC, Lieutenant General Dan Schroeder; and Task Force 

Falcon from the 1st Armored Division, the US brigade group in KFOR. The briefing addressed 

ready forces and deployment times, illustrating them with the SETAF emergency deployment 

readiness exercise (EDRE) just then underway in Hungary, using V Corps force enablers and 

the 508th Airborne Infantry. Also emphasized was the new rail link with Kosovo (producing $2 

million cost savings) as well as the comparative convenience resulting compared to mixed air 

and sea lift. Finally, the briefing showed ongoing initiatives to reduce headquarters size, both 

in weight and numbers, to upgrade Ramstein Air Force Base and the DPC for more efficient air 

deployment, and to improve the Army-US Air Force Europe (USAFE) interface through joint 

training and better JOPES management.

A second part of the briefing addressed training. The USAREUR unit training cycle, with 

mission-focused branches, was displayed. The CINC’s attention was drawn particularly to the 

Victory Strike exercise scheduled for Poland in October. A case was made for retaining the corpslevel headquarters in Europe as the price of doing business in NATO. At this point, General 

Meigs took an interesting tack, delineating the importance of engagement as justification for a 

continued theater force presence, but then revealing that engagement had led to an increase in 

the number of exercises that were difficult to sustain due to mission-related OPTEMPO. Indeed, 

since 1998, barely half of the exercises EUCOM scheduled had been executed because of the 

impact on OPTEMO, already high because of Balkan contingencies and requirements. The 

CINC’s general predisposition with regard to the US presence in the Balkans can be deduced 

from his request for USAREUR “to work with EUCOM to develop measures other than CONOPs 

[contingency operations] funding that better show the changing nature of the commitment to 

the Balkans.” The intent, according to the tasking issued to the USAREUR staff, “is to show that 

the U.S. mission/presence is being reduced. Further, the intent is to identify missions that can 

be deleted or modified in order to reduce forward U.S. presence.”70 
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Meigs asked for help with military construction costs, regarding which, he said, USAREUR 

received only 4 percent of the Army budget allocation for that item. Meigs found General 

Ralston surprisingly receptive. Indeed, Ralston, a Washington insider as Vice Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated he could probably find construction money without becoming at 

odds with the Army transformation budget. General Meigs had heard in advance that Ralston 

was convinced the Army had been downsized unwisely in Europe. Meigs set out to put that 

conviction in proper context and to explain the funding obstacles to further divestment of old, 

poorly situated facilities. Indeed, he convinced the new CINC to support the so far unfunded 

plan (Efficient Basing Initiative--East) to move the 1st Armored Division 1st Brigade Combat 

Team from the Giessen-Friedberg area to Vilseck-Grafenwoehr into a custom-built community. 

Meigs also caught the CINC’s attention when he briefed the plan to increase the 173d Airborne 

Brigade to two airborne battalions, each with its own mobility package of HMMWVs.71

In a message back to the Chief of Staff afterward, Meigs reported the session as a success. 

The Chief responded on 8 August, commenting favorably on Meigs’ intentions to fuse the two 

Balkan command and control systems (i.e., the Balkan digitization initiatives discussed earlier), 

authorizing further work through the US Embassy in Italy on the 173d Airborne Brigade 

expansion; and in particular supporting the restationing initiatives (apparently with assurance 

of CINC support for the investment costs).72 By September, Hondo Campbell was preparing a 

briefing team to send to Washington to brief the Senate Armed Forces Committee staff on two 

“efficient basing initiatives” (i.e., East and South), including costs and benefits.73 Bill Chesarek, 

who had managed restationing for the USAREUR Commanders since the time of General 

Crouch, observes that the Restationing Initiative-East had first arisen out of the Directorate of 

Resource Management as a cost avoidance measure. It had been recognized subsequently as an 

operational opportunity by the former V Corps Commander, General Hendrix, but it had not 

gotten off the drawing board because of its initial investment costs. The notion was resurrected 

with the CINC by General Meigs now, because Meigs saw the opportunity to support Ralston’s 

ideas about Army restationing.74 Meigs first pointed out what the Army’s restationing process 

had accomplished during the preceding decade and then pointed to opportunities for further 

long-term gains, already developed but lacking investment resources. Strategic command, not 

infrequently, entails its own opportunism. In this case, a new US theater CINC had made the 

formerly desirable appear within the range of the possible.

In his briefing to the CINCEUR, the USAREUR Commander briefly addressed the need to 

integrate the plethora of mandated exercises--component, joint, and combined--that Europebased service headquarters had to confront. The CINC had directed a joint training review on 

15 June 2000. In fact, the Europe-based Army and Air Force commanders had been trying to 

come up with a common approach to an integrated exercise strategy since a EUCOM command 

post-exercise in January. The common notion was that EUCOM forces could develop a 2-year 

cycle of progressive and sequential exercises that would achieve service, joint command, and 

alliance training objectives concurrently. 

Meanwhile, General Meigs directed his own headquarters to begin working to integrate 

the Air Force more fully in key USAREUR exercises, the 2001 Victory Strike in Poland and a 

deliberately designed, Army-originated, JTF Exercise--Agile Lion-01. Agile Lion was intended 

to train SETAF to perform as a JTF. As a measure of the importance each service attached to an 

integrated joint training process and of the degree of cooperation the components’ respective 

commanders had been able to establish since Meigs’ return to the Central Region, the Air Force 

agreed to bring in 3rd Air Force as a secondary training audience in the Army component 

exercise. In addition, the USAFE Commander said he would provide the Commander, 3rd Air 

Force, Major General Hess, to act as Deputy JTF Commander. USAREUR DCG, Lieutenant 

General Larry Jordan, would act as a deputy exercise director on site and CINC role player. 
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The Joint Warfighting Center would provide the control structure, while General (US Army, 

Retired) Gary Luck and Lieutenant General (US Air Force, Retired) Croker would serve as JTF 

and joint force air component commander (JFACC) senior mentors, respectively. The Air Force 

committed to sending 86 personnel to the JTF headquarters and 20 to the Joint Exercise Control 

Group, a total of 106. Notably, the Navy committed to send 39 and the Marine Corps, 34. Agile 

Lion, with Phase I (academic training) scheduled for 5-8 December 2000 and Phase II (command 

post-and combined arms exercise) for 8-21 February 2001, would stand as validators in principle 

for the sort of integration the Army and Air Force sought, combining JCS, EUCOM, Army, and 

Air Force training objectives in a single event.

Of course, General Meigs’ first year back in Heidelberg ended with the ball still very much 

in play. Two October 2000 briefings from his files serve as ideal indicators of the state of the 

command at the point where this study comes to a close. The first was given to the retired senior 

European officers who were holders of the US Army Legion of Merit.75 The second was a budget 

presentation at the October 2000 Board of Directors Meeting.76

The Legion of Merit briefing is an annual affair intended to reach out to influential retired 

officers in allied armies. Generally 70 to 80 officers attend each year. The briefings in October 

2000 addressed US Army transformation and other initiatives as well as concerns of the Europebased Army. Three major USAREUR initiatives were addressed: rapid deployment; smaller 

and more efficient tactical operations centers; and improvements in information operations and 

situational awareness. USAREUR reported on its deployment goal, highlighting its immediate 

reaction force (IRF) coexisting with an airborne battalion reinforced by a heavy company team, 

air deployable in 48 hours. It also reported on the motorization of the 1st Battalion, 508th 

Airborne Infantry, as well as the introduction of specialized deployable command and control 

packages. The benefits of the ongoing force structure enhancements for the 173d Airborne 

Brigade were discussed, along with notice that the brigade’s long-range reconnaissance 

detachment would be activated in January 2001. Briefings also addressed study efforts to 

reconfigure USAREUR Headquarters into a divisible organization containing a USAREUR 

major army command directorate staff (TDA77) and a deployable Seventh Army operational 

headquarters (TOE78), capable of acting as a joint task force, joint force land component, or Army 

force command headquarters. Balkan digitization was explained, and there was an update on 

US Army operations in Kosovo.

The USAREUR Commander also asked for help from the allied officers. The USAREUR 

Engineer presented a briefing on anticipated difficulties growing out of European Union (EU) 

directives to protect flora, fauna, and animal habitat.79 The German government interpreted the 

EU directives as leaving no discretion with regard to areas requiring protection and as applying 

to military training areas as well as any others according to a set of fixed criteria. General 

Meigs reported on his own involvement in addressing the issues raised: meetings with Länder 

Minister Presidents, coordination with the US Ambassador, meeting with Dr. Javier Solana (now 

Secretary-General of the Western European Union and High Representative of the European 

Union for the Common Foreign and Security Policy), orientations for German officials at the 

US Major Training Areas (MTAs) to demonstrate the quality of existing US stewardship, and 

writing to the German Defense Minister and Minister President asking their assistance. The US 

Army’s strategy was to seek the adoption of military exceptions in the EU policy in recognition 

of the demonstrated benefits of existing military stewardship. The principal concern expressed 

was that, as things stood, there were no identifiable limits to restrictions that could be imposed, 

with the result that future training in the several local and MTAs would be impaired. The 

briefings closed with acknowledgement of USAREUR’s role in NATO. USAREUR’s cumulative 

engagement in Europe was encapsulated as follows:
261

18,500 soldiers and civilians deployed

Operating in 18 countries

Engaged with 31 individual countries

In sum, USAREUR, representing 13 percent of the Army, supported 62 percent of 

the Army’s deployed forces.80

If the Legion of Merit briefings provided the good news story in USAREUR, the BOD budget 

briefing that same month provided a warning of harder times to come. General Campbell 

reported to the BOD that a time of reasonably available investment capital generated by savings 

dating back to General Crouch’s efficiencies programs, dual use of contingency funding,81 and 

the flexibility to exploit efficiencies in materiel maintenance accounts, was coming to an end.82

USAREUR was being “taxed” with reduced funding by DA to pay transformation costs, while 

the shift to a single stock fund would remove a major source of additional investment capital. 

Starting in 2002, anticipated funding levels would be below those necessary to meet critical 

requirements, much less the investment costs to fund USAREUR transformation and well-being 

initiatives. USAREUR was once again confronted by the need to harvest additional efficiencies, 

but the range of possibilities was significantly smaller than they had been in 1995. The challenges 

for the coming years would be no less difficult than those for years just passed. Before he left, 

General Meigs would have to lay the foundation for the fiscal conditions that would govern his 

successor. How he would meet this challenge is a story for another study.

For the most part, this chapter has addressed the actions General Meigs took on returning 

from the Balkans to the Central Region to take on the Herculean task of reconfiguring his 

command. He devoted significant energy to defining USAREUR in those terms to a variety of 

internal and external audiences that could help him find the resources to achieve the Vision or 

employ the force when the need arose. But as a part of his public role as a senior Army leader, 

the USAREUR Commander also addressed broader professional topics that provide an insight 

into his own view of the role of the senior leader in the profession of arms. In June 2000, General 

Meigs was the US Army Kermit Roosevelt Lecturer in the United Kingdom.83 Later that year, 

he gave a similar address to an audience of French officers. In October, he was sent back to Fort 

Leavenworth by the Army Chief of Staff to talk to the rising class of Army brigadier generals 

about what constituted generalship. These addresses encapsulate much of what Montgomery 

Meigs had learned in a career that combined hard practical training and executive work with 

study, graduate level academic reflection of a high order, combat experience in two very 

different wars, and senior leadership of a coalition military command twice in the Balkans.

The title of the Kermit Roosevelt Lecture was “Operational Art in the New Century--Some 

Thoughts From the Field.”84 Meigs challenged his audience with two propositions: first, that “we 

are experiencing a shift in the nature of the art of operations; second, that “we are also challenged 

to hold onto the relevant aspects of classic theory of operational art.” [Emphasis added.] The 

distinction implied by the difference in terms was one that Meigs pondered while leading 

an effort to write a new operational manual for the US Army while he commanded at Fort 

Leavenworth. The art of operations, he said, involved “how we soldiers must do our business.” 

It “concerns the conduct of campaigns, the actions of corps to Combined Joint Task Forces . . . [it] 

involves execution, coordination, and collective effort of organizations.” This was distinguished 

from operational art, which “addresses the mind and personality of the commander, how he sees 

the battle and makes his decisions.” The art of operations was executive; operational art was 

personal, essentially mental and emotional (intuitive).

The art of operations was changing because of the onrush of information technologies. These 

made the conduct of military operations more difficult rather than easier and demanded “new 
262

rules for how we soldiers do our business.” The steady introduction of “new” technologies was 

accompanied by new strategic circumstances and kinds of enemies, which further complicated 

the soldier’s business. “Yet,” he said, “we will still have a requirement to apply overwhelming 

force against the enemy’s operational center of gravity in order to win quickly at least cost.” 

In the case of limited war or peace operations, he identified the enemy center of gravity as his 

hold on political power and the organizations and instruments that allow him to maintain that 

power. He questioned, without apology, the proposition that bombing alone could break that 

national will, or defeat the military forces of a “disciplined, ruthless foe.”

Meigs identified four “immutables” that had to be preserved:

1. The bond of leader and led in selfless service to the state as a premise of military service.

2. The character, intellect, and fighting competence of the leader.

3. The value of tactical excellence, and,

4. The ability of the leader to instill confidence and press on.

The fourth referred to instilling confidence in the senior leader’s political masters and 

general public opinion, as well as, more obviously, in the soldiers expected to follow him. To 

do this, it was necessary to develop senior officers capable of dealing credibly with both elected 

members of government and the media. “We must engage our politicians and media leaders as 

never before,” he said. Political leaders had to be engaged all the time, first to build confidence 

in professional advisers before a situation became difficult, and second because the conduct of 

military operations had become so complex and technical that political leaders needed to be 

made aware before a crisis of the capabilities and limitations of the instruments they might wish 

to call upon.

Learning how to deal with the press was equally important because the press, for good or ill, 

has become the lens through which the actions of the military are viewed by the public. Meigs, 

who demonstrated his talent in dealing with both US and foreign journalists in Bosnia, laid 

down some skills that were essential for contemporary military leaders.

They must be able to convey to the naturally skeptical members of the fourth estate that they know 

their business and are speaking with honesty and competence. They must be able to tell [the] 

command’s story in a way that is simple, credible and on the mark. They must engender in our 

soldiers and junior leaders ... the confidence and sensitivity to play their own role in telling the 

story. And finally, they must develop sensitivity to the time value of well-documented information 

to political leaders who must always answer the pressure of the daily news conference.

Institutionally, of course, it remained essential to recruit and retain the best possible soldiers 

and leaders, to invest in tough, challenging training and the development of imaginative and 

innovative leaders.

In his speech to the new brigadier general selectees titled Generalship: Qualities, Instincts, 

and Character,” Meigs was both more personal and introspective than in the Roosevelt lecture.85

It is very likely the best presentation General Montgomery C. Meigs, Ph.D., has ever written, 

reflecting both a depth of scholarship unusual in a successful soldier and a healthy reflection of 

his own fundamental humanity, a characteristic quality in the eyes of those who know him well. 

The presentation as an essay rivals those of Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell in Generals and 

Generalship,

86 the type that serves as a standard in the genre. The heart of the piece is a discussion 

of four characteristics of generalship--marks of character--or what Meigs calls “the windows to 

the warrior soul.” These are:
263

1. Force of intellect, consisting of “the elements of decision and execution,” competence, 

intuition and will; 

2. Energy; 

3. Selflessness; and, 

4. The basic humanity that gives him a feel for the troops that in turn engenders that bond 

between leader and led upon which depends so fundamentally the personal sacrifices 

that bring victory.

For force of intellect, Meigs alluded to Grant at Shiloh and Vicksburg and to Omar Bradley 

after Normandy. In terms reminiscent of John Keegan’s admiring portrayal of Wellington’s 

clarity of mind under fire at Waterloo,87 Meigs praises Grant’s mental discipline the first day 

at Shiloh. In Bradley’s case, what Meigs esteemed was his ability to extract himself mentally 

from the post-Normandy slogging match, and think through the operational problem of how to 

conduct a breakout. Meigs describes it this way:

Successful flag officers think their way through problems to derive innovative solutions. They 

calculate and accept the risks inherent in those solutions and through force of personality 

discipline their organizations to execute their intent. Remember, the great military ideas are really 

very simple. This ability does not only require intellect and will, it takes a fair amount of energy 

and drive.

In the case of energy, the focus was on getting around, both to maintain an appreciation 

for the temper of the force and its situation and to bring the impact of one’s personality to 

events at the decisive point. Speaking of Union generals at Gettysburg, Meigs observed: 

“They control the tactical tempo of the battlefield. Precisely because of their energy and 

being at the right place at the right time, they fight a better tactical battle than their grey clad 

counterparts.” The human touch is essential in war, Meigs said, because generalship involves 

“leading people in the most demanding circumstances, it involves motivation and consensus 

and the ability to elicit personal sacrifice.” After reflecting on General Fritz Kroesen, a greatly 

admired predecessor at USARUER, Meigs spoke of Washington at Newburgh, who succeeded 

in putting down the incipient rebellion through a simple gesture and the “hard won emotional 

loyalty” of his troops.

For those who know General Meigs, however, and know some of the commanders under 

whom he served, there was a particularly autobiographical reflection that may have passed 

unnoticed by the audience. It had to do with selfless loyalty, particularly during times of great 

stress, when one doubts the wisdom of one’s commander. It is worth considering at length 

because of the light it throws on the subject of this study.

Finally, as a general you will often be faced with following a course of action with which you do 

not completely agree. You may know a better way. You may have even offered that alternative to 

the boss, and may have even argued for it conclusively. Or...you may find yourself constrained by 

guidance from political leadership that you believe mitigates military effectiveness and increases 

risk. In these moments it is always a good thing to attempt to put yourself in the boss’s shoes. 

What are the constraints with which he must deal? Is there something he has factored into the 

decision that you have missed or underrated? Is there a way to meet his intent with an innovative 

course of action not yet proposed but within one’s latitude for initiative? It also never hurts to 

accept that one is not always right all of the time. In the final analysis, if the order is illegal or 

negligent or totally inimical to success, you may have to request relief. But remember that the faith 

in the commander due because of his position that you receive from your soldiers is due from you 

to your commander. Even when faced with a less than optimum decision, especially when the 

commander does not have the human touch to engender confidence, you must execute loyally and 
264

with enthusiasm.

It is in his frequent embodiment of that formulation of honest humility and obligation, more 

than in his subtle intellect or acute tactical skill, that Montgomery Meigs really stands apart 

from most of his peers.

Like General William Crouch, with whom this study began, Montgomery Meigs returned 

to Heidelberg from Sarajevo at a point of change, a strategic deflection point if you will. If 

Crouch was the first post-drawdown commander, Meigs became, with his return, the first postBosnia commander. In 2000, US troops still played an important role in Bosnia and Kosovo 

but the role was, at least for the moment, routinized. The USAREUR commander could again 

ask what USAREUR must become to remain a relevant part of the National Military Strategy. 

Montgomery Meigs, and for that matter his predecessors, would be the first to opine that they 

were always in command in USAREUR, even while they were located in Sarajevo, and that 

would be true. One should not underestimate, however, the importance to a command of 

seeing the four-star around regularly, observing what he is saying and what he is doing. The 

moral force that surrounds senior military officers almost on its own sweeps up those in their 

wake and carries them along. Military organizations led by any four-star general worth his salt 

are characterized by a cult of personality.

General Meigs returned to USAREUR in October 1999 already having succeeded to a great 

extent in mobilizing his own headquarters on behalf of the USAREUR vision set down by 

his predecessor. Accepting the vision in its broad general outline did not mean, however, 

that Meigs could not give the vision shape and content, not so much by altering the rhetoric 

but by what he did and what he supported. Meigs remained a leader in peace operations, of 

course, even while he prepared his forces for whatever contingency might present itself next. 

Though his success, like that of most strategic leaders, will be properly assessed only after he 

is long gone from Europe, a number of features of his command of USAREUR are likely to 

remain noteworthy: the extent to which he identified early what USAREUR had to be and a 

few medium-term actions that could posture it better for that role; the way he pursued those 

goals consistently, allowing his chief of staff to organize a comprehensive management process 

to worry the second-order but nonetheless essential issues along--promoting deployability, 

raising the operational capability of USAREUR attack aviation, motorizing the 508th Airborne 

Infantry, working to produce a second airborne infantry battalion for the 173d within 

the personnel end strength in Europe, giving Balkan digitization a start, encouraging the 

development of a flexible flyaway JTF headquarters nucleus in SETAF. All these initiatives 

were selected early and pursued with single-minded focus.

Because he could rely on Hondo Campbell to run the strategic vision process with his staff, 

Meigs could emphasize his public role as a USAREUR Commander articulating the common 

superintending narrative. He made himself a master of the key detail, but rather than burying 

himself in minutia he squeezed out time to explain and sell the command to those who could 

smooth its path into the future: German Minister Presidents, US congressmen and congressional 

staffers, and obviously the CINC/SACEUR and the Army Chief of Staff. He recognized that to 

continue to prosper beyond the term of his own command, USAREUR had to be useful to the 

superiors who controlled both “two year” money (that actually appropriated) and the Program 

Objective Memorandum (or POM) that lays out anticipated expenditures. Thus USAREUR had 

to be attractive to the Commander in Chief, whose initial interest seemed to be abating, and 

to an Army Chief of Staff fully engaged in institutionalizing changes that would be realized 

only after both he and General Meigs were long retired. To the CINC, Meigs sold the promise 

of agile, powerful, rapidly deployable forces and more effective engagement with new NATO 
265

members. To the Army Chief of Staff, he offered a field site to test digitization, an intermediate 

deployment platform, and ready forces for contingencies beyond the European AOR, plus a 

compelling argument for a continuing role for Army forces in Europe itself. To both superiors 

he offered well-thought-out advice on how to make their organization more effective, and he 

was willing, as in the case of the joint exercise program with the Air Force, to put USAREUR in 

motion in anticipation of the commander’s decision rather than waiting for it.

He did all of this while providing for sustainment and oversight of deployed USAREUR forces 

in the Balkans and elsewhere, and working with the DCG to bring USAREUR community living 

standards to parity with those back home. Meigs allocated his time among visiting training and 

communities, working out issues with the host nation, planning and participating in USAREUR 

operations, visiting NATO and non-NATO US allies in the EUCOM AOR, working USAREUR 

command issues, and pursuing Army issues in Europe and in Washington, DC.

At the end of the day, realization of the current USAREUR strategic vision will depend on 

a continued commitment by the United States to its leadership role in the Atlantic Alliance and 

a recognition that capable land forces on the ground in Europe are a major factor in sustaining 

US leadership. The Department of Defense and the Army, in particular, will be hard pressed to 

find money for long-term capital investment and a comparatively large standing military force 

in what is taken to be a time of peace. There are those who, for a variety of reasons, believe that 

airplanes and missiles can punish any miscreants who attack American interests. Moreover, 

these believers in airplanes and missiles define the interests for which any risk is acceptable 

in increasingly narrow terms. There are also those who believe the EUCOM land mission can 

be accomplished by a Marine expeditionary unit sailing around the littoral and US Central 

Command (CENTCOM) reinforcements from CONUS. In all probability, the need for the 

Commander USAREUR to continue to justify the existence of his command and headquarters 

will not end with General Meigs’ departure. However the future turns out, it will be the result 

as much of events outside the Central Region as those within. But that is how it is with strategic 

leadership. The strategic leader only rarely is privileged to see his vision achieved on his own 

watch or to control the global circumstances that militate for or against its realization.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 11

1. The Keyes Building is the location of the USAREUR Command Group offices at Campbell Barracks, 

Heidelberg.

2. MEMORANDUM FOR BG [GUY] SWAN, SUBJECT: USAREUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS, dated 12 October 

2000, signed by William A. Stofft, Facilitator. BG Guy Swan was the newly appointed Commander, Seventh Army 

Training Command. Copy of memorandum provided to author by MG (Ret) Stofft.

3. These conferences, a vestige of the Crouch Senior Leader Training Program, tended to change title and 

frequency over Shinseki’s and Meigs’ commands. To avoid confusion in light of the frequency of name changes, 

they are all referred to here as Senior Leader Conferences.

4. MEMORANDUM FOR BG [GUY] SWAN, 12 October 2000.

5. Ken Blanchard and Don Shula, Everyone’s a Coach: You Can Inspire Anyone to be a Winner (New York: Harper 

Business, 1995).

6. Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company (New 

York: Currency-Doubleday, 1996, 1999), p. 32.

7. Dorothy Denning, Information Warfare and Security (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co, 1998); 

Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (NY: Vintage Books, 1996); Clayton M. Christensen, Innovator’s Dilemma: When 
266

New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (New York: Harper Business, 2000); Larry Downes and Chunka Mui, 

Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 

2000).

8. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing, Command Philosophy and Vision, Senior Leader 

Conference, 17 November 1998.

9. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Board of Directors, Notebook, March 2000 Board of Directors Meeting, 

Briefing USAREUR STRATEGY XXI, contains the chronology of the development of the strategy document. The 

final document itself is on line at the USAREUR Homepage: http://www.hqusareur.army.mil/ htmlinks/strategy.htm.

10. CAC at Ft. Leavenworth, KS, is one of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command’s two coordinating 

commands. The other is the Combined Arms Support Command at Ft. Lee, VA. CAC is particularly concerned 

with command and control issues.

11. Headquarters USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Board of Directors, MEMORANDUM FOR 

COMMANDING GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY EUROPE, SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of Directors (BOD), 

dated 21 November 1998, signed, William A. Stofft. Since its inception, General Stofft has submitted reports on 

BOD meetings privately to the CG. Under General Meigs more detailed notes were taken by the Commander’s 

Initiatives Group. Both the Board of Directors Office and Commander’s Initiatives Group maintain a library of 

notebooks for each BOD Meeting.

12. Headquarters USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Board of Directors, Notebook, February 1999 Board of 

Directors Meeting, Agenda.

13. According to Mr. Bill Chesarek, DCSOPS-FMD, the DPC dates back to a NEO deployment to Africa 

in which Mahan’s predecessor, MG Jim Wright, marshalled aviation assets at Rhine Ordnance Barracks. The 

helicopters were never shipped but the idea stuck, and Mahan was building on that beginning.

14. Lieutenant General John W. Hendrix, Commanding General, V Corps, End of Tour Interview, conducted at 

Campbell Barracks, Heidelberg Germany, 2 November 1999, by Dr. Charles E. Kirkpatrick, pp. 16-18. Hendrix 

attributes the lack of sustained focus to the Europe personnel turnover consequent to the 3-year rotation.

15. HQ V Corps, Commander, Letter from Lieutenant General James C. Riley to Commander, USAREUR and 

Seventh Army, SUBJECT: Request for Additional Manpower Authorizations, in HQ USAREUR, Secretary of the 

General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 17 December 1999.

16. A useful chronology of the Kosovo crisis is available from the PBS Program War In Europe, on line at http:

//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kosovo/etc/cron.html.

17. The chronology of USAREUR actions with regard to Task Force Hawk deployment is taken from a detailed 

chronology produced by Lieutenant Colonel George Hull of the USAREUR Commander’s Initiatives Group from 

original documents. Hereinafter referred to as Hull Chronology.

18. Captain Donald Hamilton, Command Historian for Task Force Hawk, completed a number of important 

interviews with V Corps leaders about the corps’ efforts meeting rapidly shifting Kosovo requirements. These are 

available at the V Corps history office. Among the most important are those with V Corps Deputy Commander 

J. B. Burns and Chief of Staff Brigadier General William H. Brandenberg. Burns was the advance man into both 

Macedonia and Albania for V Corps.

19. General Montgomery Meigs, 1999 COMSFOR Personal Notebooks I QTR, note for 5 March.

20. HQ USAREUR, Commander’s Initiatives Group, Briefing, Command Philosophy and Vision, Senior Leader 

Conference, 17 November 1998.

21. For the persistence of this view, see the discussion of Task Force Hawk in the October 2000 PBS Frontline 

Program, The Future of War, on line at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/future/experts/taskforce.html.
267

22. General Eric Shinseki, Intent of the Chief of Staff of the Army, 23 June 99, on line on the Army Home Page at 

http://www.army.mil/armyvision/intent.htm.

23. The President authorized deployment on 3 April. Apaches began to arrive at Tirane on 17 April. Hull 

Chronology.

24. See Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (London: Chatto and Windus, 2000), particularly the 

chapter “The Virtual Commander,” pp. 91-115, also available in The New Yorker, August 2, 1999, pp. 30-36.

25. An excellent account of the War is found in the PBS Program, War in Europe, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/

pages/ frontline/shows/kosovo/.htm.

26. Army Secretary Louis Caldera, quoted in Dana Priest, “Risks and Restraint: Why the Apaches Never Flew 

in Kosovo,” The Washington Post, 29 December 1999, p. A1.

27. See the recurrent discussion of Task Force Hawk in the interviews about Army Transformation in the 

October 2000 PBS Frontline Program, The Future of War, on line at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/

future/.htm.

28. For example, the choice of a Europe-based Corps aviation unit designed to operate within a ground force 

structure and therefore sub-optimized in training and equipment for solo deep penetration, rather than bringing 

in a CONUS-based unit less limited by local training restrictions, or a Special Operations aviation force better 

equipped and trained for long distance penetration missions (a decision likely dictated by the shortages of strategic 

lift).

29. For example, the percentage of the Air Force structure dedicated to strategic lift, given the shift from a 

forward deployed to force projection military.

30. Two come to mind immediately: (1) the need to train the committed force in a number of difficult flying and 

deep penetration skills on-the-fly; (2) the shortage in strategic lift available to move Hawk, given the decision to 

give priority of strategic lift to relief supplies.

31. Sean D. Naylor, “Sidelined: How America won a war without the Army,” and “Going nowhere fast; 

Delayed deployment blamed on many factors,” The Army Times, 16 August 1999, pp. 18-20. Forrest Sawyer, of ABC 

News Program Nightline, produced a program on 30 June 1999, titled “All Fueled Up, No Place to Go,” that pretty 

well addressed the travails of Task Force Hawk itself. Sawyer was in Albania with Hawk. A transcript is available 

from ABC News. The interviews of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and particularly the Army Chief of Staff, General 

Dennis Reimer, are particularly noteworthy. See also Ignatieff, “The Virtual Commander.” Wes Clark’s version is 

in Clark, Waging Modern War.

32. Sean D. Naylor, “They weren’t ready; General Says Task Force Hawk Aviators Unprepared for Challenges 

in Kosovo,” Army Times, 5 July 1999, p. 8. Cody’s e-mail circulated on line at various sites. One site is http:

//belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/mie/mie_24.htm. See also Sean D. Naylor, “Army aviation leaders claim 

branch in ‘crisis’,” Army Times, 24 January 2000, p. 11. The V Corps History Office has an excellent interview with 

General Cody in May while the mission was ongoing. HQ V Corps, History Office, Interview with Major General 

Richard Cody, Deputy Commanding General, Air and Special Operations Task Force Hawk. Parts 1 and 2 conducted in 

Tirana-Rinas, Albania, 6 and 22 May 1999. Part 3 conducted in Washington, DC, 10 May 2000. Interviewer: Captain 

Donald Hamilton, Task Force Hawk, Command Historian.

33. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Military Readiness Subcommittee, 

Readiness of the Army AH-64 Apache Helicopter Fleet, 106th Cong., 1st sess., 1 July 1999. Also testifying was Colonel 

Howard T. Bramblett, Program Manager, AH-64 Apache Helicopter.

34. Hull Chronology.

35. See particularly “Task Force Hawk and Its ‘Bum Rap’,” in Air Force Magazine, Vol. 83, No. 7, July 2000, p. 20, 
268

summarizing a presentation General Meigs gave before the Defense Writers Group in Washington, DC, on 24 May. 

Meigs also responded to the criticisms of the Cody report in a Nightline Interview with Aron Brown that followed 

the Forrest Sawyer report, note 31 above). The transcript is titled Lessons Learned, ABC Transcript #N990630, June 

30, 1999.

36. The Roberts Amendment, passed in June 1998, was a Republican measure to require Presidential consultation 

with congressional leaders prior to the expenditure of any DoD funds on Balkan deployments.

37. A frequent CG comment in the handwritten notes taken by SGS notetakers during briefings on aviation 

issues. A clear assessment of the importance General Meigs attached to the extent of problems in the aviation 

community can be gained from reading the notes taken of his comments at a briefing on 14 September 2000 by 

officers involved in the Apache Long Bow Program. The CG began the briefing with a preamble detailing the 

shortcomings in Army attack aviation, including the assessment: “I will never send a soldier where I can’t get him 

back--and we are there.” He also is quoted as observing the program was approaching “culpable negligence.” 

Briefing the USAREUR Commander on Apache Long Bow was an unpleasant experience, not least because he 

knew as much about the problems with the system as any aviator. Headquarters USAREUR, Secretary of the 

General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 14 September 2000, Handwritten Notes by Staff Action Control Officer, “Brief to 

CG on Long Bow Maintenance.” 

38. HQ USAREUR, Secretary of the General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 2 December 1999, Handwritten Notes 

by Staff Action Control Officer, “U’R Force Structure Pre-Brief 2 Dec to CG.” This was the CG’s prebriefing of the 

briefing for the Chief of Staff’s visit prior to its subsequent review by the BOD.

39. In an August 2000 In-Progress Review, IPR, 75 issues were still being tracked. HQ USAREUR, DCSOPS, 

Briefing, Aviation Initiatives, IPR #4, 23 October 2000, As of 20 September 2000. Provided to author by LTC George 

Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

40. See Sean D. Naylor, “Exodus from Germany: Why Army units want another place to train,” in Army Times, 

December 25, 2000, pp. 12-13.

41. Headquarters USAREUR, Secretary of the General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 3 March 2000, Entry on CG 

Tasker: SLC [Senior Leadership Conference] Tasker--Use of Apaches in Battle Command Training Program, 

BCTP): “The CG noted that the Army has trained a generation of senior leaders that the Apache is the superman 

of the battlefield and went on to note that he didn’t want to see that idea continued in BCTP training. He said there 

was a need for the aviation community to work with V Corps to capture its experience on the use of Apaches and 

apply it BCTP exercises in USAREUR.”

42. Memorandum dated 18 Oct ’00, Victory Strike, Executive Summary, signature block of [Col] J. D. Johnson 

in HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Personal Files, File, 1mm, Staff Action Summaries/Executive 

Summaries, Oct 2000.

43. HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Force Modernization 

Directorate, Briefing, USAREUR XXI; On Point for the Nation Today and Tomorrow, provided to the author by LTC 

George Hull of the Commander’s Initiatives Group.

44. The role of SETAF as a flyaway JTF also predated current efforts. General Nix had started that effort while 

he commanded SETAF under General Crouch. His successor, Major General Edward Smith, created a facility and 

plans for assuming the JTF role. The author, then an instructor at the Army’s School for Advanced Military Studies, 

received a briefing on the facility on site during General Smith’s tenure.

45. HQ USAREUR, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Briefing, USAREUR XXI . . . A Vision for the 21st 

Century and Strategic Deployment, USAREUR Board of Directors Meeting 20 JUL 99. Briefing can be found in the 

pertinent Board of Directors Notebook in the Commander’s Initiatives Group, or Board of Directors Office.

46. Ibid., slides titled: USAREUR REG 525-1; Commander’s Intent.

47. Information extracted from Information Paper, HQ USAREUR, AEAGC-IMD-C2, dated 31 January 2000, 
269

SUBJECT: USAREUR Digitization Initiatives, drafted by MAJ Moore and approved by LTC Michael Pigott, Chief 

Information Management Division, IMD, ODCSOPS. Paper provided by COL (Ret) John O. Welch.

48. General Meigs raised this issue at the SETAF Semi-annual Training Briefing on 9 November and later 

during the pre-brief of the briefing for General Shinskeki given by Mr. Chesarek on 2 December. See Series of 

Actions Out of SETAF, SATB, 25 Oct 99, and U’R Force Structure Pre-Brief, 2 Dec 99, in HQ USAREUR, SGS, Daily 

Staff Journal, 10 November and 2 December 1999, respectively.

49. Remarks by General Montgomery C. Meigs, Keynote Speaker 1999 Defense Forum and Symposium Recognition 

Dinner, 10 September 1999, Major Michael Bell, Commanders Initiatives Group, speechwriter. Provided by LTC 

George Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

50. HQ USAREUR, AEACC-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: V Corps SATB, 10 SEP 99; 

CG USAREUR Comments, dated 30 SEP 99, drafted by Lieutenant Colonel Michael S. Bell. The principals at the 

briefing were General Meigs, Lieutenant General Hendrix, the two division commanders, Major General John 

Abizaid and Major General Rusty Casey, the USAREUR DCSOPS, Brigadier General (P) John Casey, and the 

Seventh ATC Commander, Brigadier General Bantz Craddock. Memorandum in possession of author.

51. General Meigs, Ibid. 

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. HQ USAREUR, ODCSOPS, IOD, Briefing, Strategic Communications Steering Group, Sharing the USAREUR 

Vision; USAREUR Strategic Communications, Prepared for USAREUR BOD, 19 Nov 1999. Briefing was given by LTC 

Todd Semonite, IOD, and Mr. Dave Lange, POLAD. Lange addressed USAREUR Congressional Strategy. Briefing 

is in HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, Board of Directors, Notebook, November 1999 Board of Directors 

Meeting.

55. HQ USAREUR, ODCSOPS, Briefing, USAREUR XXI . . . A VISION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY AND 

STRATEGIC DEPLOYMENT; PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF THE USAREUR DEPLOYMENT WORKING GROUP 

TO THE USAREUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS, 19 Nov 99. Briefing is in HQ USAREUR, Office of the Commander, 

Board of Directors, Notebook, March 2000 Board of Directors Meeting.

56. Chronology taken from HQ V Corps, G3, Briefing, V Corps IRF Briefing, dated 11/14/00, slide titled: IRF 

Milestones. Briefing provided by Dr. Charles Kirkpatrick, V Corps Historian.

57. HQ V Corps, G3, Briefing, Immediate Ready Company, IRC, dated 22 Sep 99. Briefing provided by Dr. Charles 

Kirkpatrick, V Corps Historian.

58. HQ USAREUR, AEACC-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of Directors 

Meeting, 19 November 99, dated 22 Nov 99, signed by Lieutenant Colonel George B. Hull. Minutes provided by 

LTC George Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

59. HQUSAREUR, AEACG-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR CHIEF OF STAFF, USAREUR and Seventh Army, 

SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of Directors Meeting, 7 DEC 99, signed by LTC Michael S. Bell. General Meigs had 

indicated he favored this move in the 2 December Force Structure Pre-Brief by Bill Chesarek. Minutes provided by 

LTC George Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

60. Ibid.

61. HQ V Corps, G3, Briefing, V Corps IRF Briefing, dated 11/14/00.

62. HQUSAREUR, AEACG-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR CHIEF OF STAFF, USAREUR and Seventh Army, 

SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of Directors Meeting, 7 DEC 99. Minutes provided by LTC George Hull, Commander’s 

Initiatives Group. 
270

63. HQ USAREUR, Chief of Staff, Briefing, VISION STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING 6 JUNE 2000, Slide, 

“Vision Steering Committee Guidance.” There is a set of historical slides that appear in almost any Vision Steering 

Committee briefing from the Chief of Staff’s Office during MG Campbell’s period as Chief. This is one of them.

64. Ibid. 

65. East for Germany--Movement of the 1st Armored Division east to Grafenwoehr. South for Italy--to find a 

base to accommodate a second airborne battalion for the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

66. HQ USAREUR, AEACC-OCG-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of 

Directors Meeting, 7 Jan 00, dated 7 Jan 00, signed by Lieutenant Colonel George B. Hull. Minutes provided by LTC 

George Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

67. The Minister Presidents of Hesse, Baden-Württemburg, Bavaria and Rhein-Pfalz. SGS Tasker, Control 

Number AEACG-3317, 10 Jan 2000, SUBJECT: Minister President Visit Read Ahead, in HQ USAREUR, Secretary 

of the General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 11 January 2000.

68. HQ USAREUR, AEACC-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of Directors 

Meeting, 24 March 00, Hilltop Inn, CMTC, Hohenfels, dated 27 Mar 00, signed by Lieutenant Colonel George Hull. 

Minutes provided by LTC George Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

69. HQ USAREUR, AEACC-CIG, MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD, SUBJECT: USAREUR Board of Directors 

Meeting, 5 May 00, Tower Inn, Grafenwoehr, dated 8 May 00, signed Lieutenant Colonel George Hull. Minutes 

provided by LTC George Hull, Commander’s Initiatives Group.

70. CG Tasker, Control Number AEADCG-4737, Task Date 26 Jun 2000, Task Subject: Changing Nature of U.S. 

Commitment to the Balkans, in HQ USAREUR, Secretary of General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 26 Jun 00. Briefings 

for the CINC’s use in talking to external audiences were produced at his request. There are drafts and notes of the 

CG and Chief of Staff’s dialogue with staff officers regarding these briefings in HQ USAREUR, Secretary of the 

General Staff, Daily Staff Journals, 13, 14 and 18 Jul 2000. Most notable is the Chief of Staff’s view that the CINC 

approached the three questions of restationing, 173rd plus-up, and Balkan troop reductions, from the standpoint of 

monetary efficiencies, while the CG did so from the standpoint of mission.

71. CG Tasker, Control Number AEADCG-4735, Task Date 26 Jun 00, Task Subject: Proposal for Long Range 

Recon Company and an Additional Airborne Infantry Battalion, in HQ USAREUR, Secretary of the General Staff, 

Daily Staff Journal, 26 Jun 00.

72. HQ Department of the Army, Message, 080606Z AUG 00, FM DA WASHINGTON DC//DACS-ZA//, TO 

CDRUSAREUR HIEDELBERG GE//AEACG//, SUBJ: INITIAL MEETING WITH CINCEUR. 

73. Handwritten SACO notes and briefing, “Efficient Basing Brief to Chief,” 8 Sep 00, in HQ USAREUR, 

Secretary of the General Staff Daily Staff Journal 8 Sep 00. The briefing, apparently originating with Bill Chesarek, 

DCSOPS-FMD, is titled: Information Briefing on USAREUR’s Efficient Basing Initiatives, for Mr. Steven Cortese, Senate 

Appropriations Committee. Mr. Cortese was Majority Staff Director for the Appropriations Committee.

74. Mr. Bill Chesarek to author.

75. HQ USAREUR, Public Affairs, Briefing, Legion of Merit Conference, 13 October 2000, in HQ USAREUR, 

Secretary of the General Staff, Daily Staff Journal, 26 SEP 00.

76. HQ USAREUR, DCSRM, briefing, Resource Update; USAREUR BOD, 24 Oct 00, in HQ USAREUR, Office of 

the Commander, Board of Directors, Notebook, October 2000 Board of Directors Meeting.

77. Table of Distribution and Allowances.

78. Table of Organization and Equipment. Operational units have TOEs. Departmental activities, TDAs.
271

79. HQ USAREUR, DCSENG, briefing, Environmental Program: Flora, Fauna, Habitat; Legion of Merit, 13 October 

2000. Briefing is attached to the Legion of Merit Conference briefing in the Secretary of the General Staff, Daily Staff 

Journal for 26 Sep 00.

80. HQ USAREUR, Public Affairs, Briefing, Legion of Merit Conference, 13 October 2000, closing slide, “Cumulative 

Effect.”

81. Contingency funds were closely scrutinized to ensure they did in fact pay for contingency costs. However, if 

a unit was trained at an MTA for a funded contingency, that training could be paid for out of contingency funds. The 

annual operating costs of the MTA, which otherwise would have had to be paid anyway, were thus reduced in that 

amount. The actual USAREUR budget therefore gained significantly from a shadow effect of Contingency Funding, 

just as it did from efficiencies in material management prior to the single stock fund. With US force presence being 

reduced in the Balkans and introduction of the single stock fund, these two sources of unbudgeted funds were going 

to disappear.

82. In an e-mail to MG, (Ret) William Stofft referring to the resource briefing, the Chief of Staff, MG Campbell, 

wrote of the FY 01 Outlook: “This is not as ‘bright’ [as FY 00]--but ‘Bottom-Line’ is that FY 01 is executable with 

responsible base program risk and CONOPS funding already appropriated. The ‘message,’ however, is that FY01 

must be a transition year to prepare for FY02 and beyond when USAREUR will ‘lose’ more than a $100M in base 

program ‘buying power’ because of the implementation of SSF [single stock fund] and the reduced ability to 

leverage ‘CONOPS’ offsets.” E-mail in possession of author.

83. Kermit Roosevelt was a son of President Theodore Roosevelt killed in World War I. A lecture series in 

his honor has existed for many years in which the British and US Armies exchange senior officers who speak to 

audiences in others’ institutions of high military education.

84. Montgomery C. Meigs “Operational Art in the New Century,” Parameters, Vol. 31, No. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 

4-14.

85. Montgomery C. Meigs, “Generalship--Qualities, Instincts, and Character,” Parameters, Vol. 31, No. 2, 

Summer 2001, pp. 4-17. See pp. 5-6 for the four characteristics of generalship discussed below.

86. Field Marshal Earl [Archibald P.] Wavell, London: Jonathan Cape, 1953, pp. 13-44. Wavell’s famous essay 

was first delivered as three lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1939.

87. John Keegan, The Mask of Command, New York: Viking, 1987, p. 98.

273

CHAPTER 12

CONCLUSIONS

The task set for this study was to “report on and analyze the mission in Bosnia from the 

perspective of the senior leaders at the top.” More specifically, it has treated the circumstances 

and actions of the operational commanders, in particular, Generals William Crouch, Eric 

Shinseki, and Montgomery Meigs. Because these officers at the center served both as service 

component commanders in Europe and as operational commanders in Bosnia, a major goal of 

the study has been to lay out the nature of both appointments and to frame the more prominent 

Bosnia mission within a consideration of the Army service component responsibilities that 

preceded, accompanied, and followed the operational command of alliance forces in peace 

operations in Bosnia. 

The 1990s opened with United States Army Europe (USAREUR) dispatching the VII Corps to 

the Arabian and Iraqi deserts to defeat the army of Saddam Hussein as part of a US-led coalition. 

The decade closed with VII Corps (and DESERT STORM) no more than a distant memory, and 

with USAREUR, a husk of its former self, sending troops to confront very different missions

--imposing peace--on the continent of Europe under command of the North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO). Along the way, USAREUR’s view of itself changed: from the DESERT 

STORM-like corps deployment rehearsed in General David Maddox’s 1994 exercise Atlantic 

Resolve; to General Crouch’s assertion in his 1996 USAREUR Campaign Plan that USAREUR 

was reshaping to become a “forward deployed contingency force with multiple requirements”; 

through General Shinseki’s creation of a USAREUR Board of Directors and a USAREUR vision 

to achieve the changes required by that notion; and General Meigs’ actions to bring it to practical 

fruition. All the while, USAREUR was planning and executing the repetitive cycle of forming, 

training, deploying, sustaining, and recovering troop elements to and from Bosnia, and later 

Kosovo, to support international efforts to stop the ethnic warfare in the region and to impose a 

sort of Western free-market democracy on the people of a shattered nation.

At first, the Commander-in-Chief USAREUR (CINCUSAREUR) was a national troop 

provider to the NATO operation in Bosnia, a role that had to be defined in practical terms in 

both US and NATO commands as the mission unfolded. In February 1996, he became as well a 

NATO operational commander and eventually moved from his US headquarters in Heidelberg 

to Sarajevo, undertaking a consuming mission in parallel to his national concurrent appointment. 

While the US service component mission tended to become routine, if still difficult, the mission 

in Bosnia seems to have been in an almost constant state of flux. This flux was mainly the result 

of the process whereby all sides--friend, foe, and neutral--learned and adapted dialectically as 

they interacted.

To the end that the international purpose in Bosnia was full implementation of the General 

Framework Agreement for Peace (general framework), the structural situation of the NATO 

commander in Bosnia was distorted from the outset. First, there was the separation imposed 

at Dayton between the military commander in theater (Commander, Implementation Force 

[COMIFOR]/Commander, Stabilization Force [COMSFOR]) and the civil implementers, 

particularly the High Representative. Then there was the absence, certainly prior to the Bonn 

Peace Implementation Council (PIC), of a civil figure corresponding in authority to the military 

commander. At the outset, when the US and NATO policy goal was merely to stop the fighting, 

there could be some logic to the civil-military division. Separating faction military forces was, at 

bottom, a uniquely military function. Once it became clear, however, that Bosnia was not full of 

nascent Jeffersonians longing to cohabit in peace as Western Europeans do, and it was therefore 

necessary to coerce them to accept the political prescriptions of Dayton, the civil-military division 
274

of authority became counterproductive. The duration of the military mission was contingent on 

the success of the program of civil implementation, and that program could be hastened along, it 

was concluded, with well-chosen military support, both instrumental (involving application of 

raw force) and cybernetic (particularly in helping infuse into the disparate civil efforts systematic 

planning and command and control systems). However, the national leaders who made up the 

Contact Group were confronted with a dilemma. They were ill-disposed as democrats to entrust 

civil administration to a military proconsul (Wes Clark’s solution) and equally unwilling to turn 

over their national military forces to a foreign civil viceroy. Indeed, at the start, the agreement 

on the importance of civil goals was so tenuous that members of the international community 

were reluctant to empower the High Representative to do more than “coordinate” the actions of 

the disparate civil authorities and employ persuasion in dealing with the Bosnian politicians. It 

took 2 years before the PIC leaders (Bonn, December 1997) were willing to empower the High 

Representative to impose laws by fiat and to fire elected and appointed Bosnian public officials 

as he saw fit. Gradually the High Representative’s authority to “coordinate” independent civil 

agencies gained substance, too, though coordination never extended to direction.

Unwilling to subordinate military forces to civil implementers, and equally unwilling to arm 

the International Police Task Force (IPTF) with weapons or executive authority, the diplomats 

at Dayton simply reversed the dual key system that had failed the United Nations Protection 

Force (UNPROFOR). The High Representative had to ask for application of coercive force to 

support his authority; the military commander in Sarajevo had authority to apply force directly 

without preliminary notice or approval from civil officials, whose subordinates might then be 

exposed to retaliation. The North Atlantic Council (NAC) and Supreme Allied Commander, 

Europe (SACEUR), who had no direct responsibility for civil implementation, would decide 

which requests for force should be honored or the limits within which IFOR/SFOR would act. 

Thus, the general framework became a mandate only in the sense of granting NATO authority

to act, not in terms of laying down an obligation to act. NATO orders and guidance, generally 

understood as limiting military action within Dayton, became the actual IFOR/SFOR mandate. 

The difference between the two, the open permissions of the general framework and limiting 

orders and instructions of NATO (as interpreted by the SACEUR and/or COMSFOR), was 

bound to be the source of a great deal of misunderstanding between SFOR and the civilian 

implementation community in Bosnia, just as Jacques Klein’s letter to General Shinseki after 

Drvar indicated. Dayton implementation was from the start a wagon pulled by a multiheaded 

horse, with each head having a different driver. 

The relationship between the military and civil arms of Dayton was complicated further by 

the COMSFOR’s obligation to preserve his independence. One reflection of this was the High 

Representative’s practical conclusions that changing the NATO mandate could be done only 

by directly approaching the NATO Secretary General and the North Atlantic Council over the 

heads of the COMSFOR and the SACEUR. Carl Bildt did this to Generals Crouch and Joulwan 

over arrest of war criminals in the spring of 1997, and Westendorp went around Shinseki to gain 

authority to order the Serb television towers seized. Another aspect of the dual control was what 

became the frequent independent intervention by the military commander into Entity political 

affairs. None of this made harmony simple in Sarajevo. Moreover, the SFOR commander had to 

deal with a constant stream of influential visitors, each an “expert” on what NATO should and 

should not be doing in Bosnia. Knowing how and when to say no was a key part of the SFOR 

commander’s job and one for which he received scant praise.

The actions required of the IFOR/SFOR commander changed as the US, international, and 

Bosnian political contexts evolved, as personalities shifted, as responsible organs of government 

were established in the Bosnian state and Entities, and as the Bosnian military balance evolved. 

The military balance changed largely as the result of US-led Department of State efforts to create 
275

a more stable balance of military forces through arming and training Federation forces under 

“Train and Equip.” Another strong impetus was the initial NATO success in separating and 

demobilizing the wartime armies, then supervising the residual faction armed forces through 

increasing internal intervention. As the international community gained more experience 

in post-empire liberal imperialism,1 the mission of NATO changed from the relatively 

straightforward task of imposing separation and demobilization on three contending armed 

forces, to serving as the principal instrument of coercion to impose a political regime on four 

reluctant groupings: Serb, Bosniac, Croat, and those cosmopolitans one always reads about 

who consider themselves Bosnian. The fourth category, lacking an army, is not provided for 

politically in the general framework. The policy environment was fraught with contradictions 

and paradoxes that only complicated the inherently complex task of conducting peace operations 

with a coalition military force. It also led to a debasement of political and diplomatic discourse, 

whereby accustomed words began to take on new meanings (not unlike that reported by the 

Greek general Thucydides in the Balkan war at Corcyra 2,500 years ago2). See, for example, the 

explanations of NATO policy on arrest of war criminals or international denials of the existence 

of an international protectorate enforced by military coercion over the territory of Bosnia. To 

assert the existence of such verbal dodges and pretexts is not necessarily to deny their utility. It 

is simply to make the case that a thing is what it is no matter what you call it, and to pretend it 

is otherwise often produces its own contradictions. Moreover, sophistries seldom fool anyone 

for long.

The most defining general context for an operational commander in peace operations is 

the strategic setting in which he operates. Unlike the case of major wars, peace operations are 

awash both in declared goals, seldom defined principally in terms simply of discrete military 

outcomes, and in limitations on actions, due either to the various political sensitivities or to 

various national and international legal restraints. Collective policy, always in flux, defines 

the goals and sets the limits within which the commander must obtain his objectives. In the 

case of Bosnia operations, the commander in Sarajevo was influenced by US, alliance, nonalliance international (particularly Russian), various Balkan (Croatian and Federal Republic 

of Yugoslavia), and specifically Bosnian policy objectives, all of which were in some degree of 

disharmony and disorder. 

In the beginning of 1995, US policy was marked by strictly limited ambitions and goals and 

a low tolerance for both risk and use of military forces outside more or less traditional military 

tasks. With the change of administration in 1997 (President Clinton’s second administration) 

the US adopted a more ambitious agenda for Bosnia and for use of US military forces to 

accomplish its goals. The new US goals were supported, if anything more aggressively, by 

the New Labor Government in Britain. British support was important in NATO because of 

Britain’s contribution of a framework division headquarters and evident greater willingness 

to accept risk to its soldiers, reflected particularly in its aggressive pursuit of persons indicted 

for war crimes. The general policy shift was reflected in, though not contingent on, the 

appointment of General Wesley Clark as SACEUR. It was also reflected in the NAC’s greater 

flexibility in opening up the limits it set on the much talked of Dayton mandate, for example, in 

the undertaking of integrated SFOR/IPTF operations in the spring of 1997 (largely it seems on 

the initiative of the then SACEUR and SFOR Commander), and in the pursuit of war criminals. 

Still, it would be 2000 before a new NATO Secretary General would openly admit that NATO 

was routinely engaged in the latter activity.3

The Russian factor was a continuous complication in the Bosnian situation. Russia was 

perceived to tilt toward the Serbs and against international interventionism. Still, Russian 

inclusion was a key strategic goal; indeed, it served as a general European confidence-building 

measure whose value transcended the local mission. NATO commanders knew this cooperation 
276

could not be allowed to fail, and both Russian and US commanders acted with great forbearance 

to make it succeed. The Balkan context too was important, particularly the extent to which the 

two neighboring states, Croatia and the FRY, stabilized or complicated the Bosnian domestic 

situation. Dayton Agreement or no, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman continued to 

have a significant voice in how the Bosnian constitutional settlement in the general framework 

progressed, not least because much of the Croat and RS faction financial support came from 

the two sponsoring states. President Milosevic could be helpful when he wanted to be and 

was so often enough to give pause to many Serb hardliners who felt sold out over Dayton and 

Brcko. President Tudjman could often impose cooperation on truculent Hrvatska Demokratska 

Zayednica (HDZ-Croat nationalist party) and Hrvatsko Vijece Odbrane (HVO-Croatian Defense 

Council or Croat faction army) officials. Croatia and FRY were part of the SFOR Commander’s 

area of interest long before the Kosovo War. A prediction by General Clark that true progress 

in Dayton implementation would await the departure of FRY President Milosevic, Croatian 

President Tudjman, and Bosniac leader Izetbegovic, seems to be proving true in the event.4

Personalities were important on the allied side as well. The personalities of the successive 

SFOR Commanders undoubtedly played a role in their success in Bosnia and in NATO. Equally 

important for their success were the personalities of major officials with whom they had to 

interact, particularly in the COMSFOR’s success in encouraging cooperation among other 

key players. The change of the SACEUR personalities reflected in the shift from Joulwan to 

Clark, coming in train of a major US policy shift, certainly altered the interpositional dynamics 

between NATO and US national policy, on one hand, and the SFOR commander, on the other. 

General Shinseki served in a very different policy milieu than his predecessor. Against Clark’s 

interventionism was balanced Westendorp’s pragmatism, undermined to be sure by the 

activism of his US deputy Jacques Klein. It is interesting to speculate what Bosnia would have 

been like had Clark’s tour at SACEUR coincided more squarely with either that of Carl Bildt 

or Wolfgang Petritsch as High Representative. Both Westendorp’s predecessor and successor 

seemed far more inclined to decisive action than was Westendorp himself, and the explanation 

does not lie simply in external circumstances. Other personalities also mattered--those of the 

Principals (the leaders of the international implementation condominium), the International 

Administrator of Brcko, the Bosnian political and military leaders, and the whole international 

diplomatic corps that regularly trouped through the office of the SFOR Commander.

The evolution of the Bosnian political structures was important because they provided 

points against which force or the threat of force could be employed. Because of their desire to 

pacify Bosnia on the cheap, the international community always depended on native Bosnian 

structures to carry out their mandates. As the international community succeeded in imposing 

increasing serviceability on indigenous bureaucracies, they increased their ability to obtain 

compliance with even more detailed intrusions. Some may wonder at the accommodations 

made by NATO and other international officials with persons ultimately indicted for war 

crimes, most notably Serb Tri-President Krajisnik, RS President Plavsic, and General Talic, and 

no less such unindicted hardliners such as RS Minister of the Interior Kijac. Suffice to say that in 

a situation like Bosnia, where international powers must rely on local leaders to maintain broad 

public order, such compromises may be required. Removing those with practical authority 

for reasons of doubtful local legitimacy requires care and deliberation as to timing. Krajisnik, 

Plavsic, and Talic were indicted by secret indictment, which brought its own complications 

once made known to the Principals. Plavsic and Krajisnik were arrested only after their political 

followings had diminished. Talic was arrested by a sovereign government (Austria) on its own 

territory.

The working of the NATO force matured as well, notwithstanding frequent changes in form, 

as all countries, including the United States, became more comfortable with actually operating 
277

together in the single chain of command they had exercised over the years. In time, the SFOR 

commanders learned what could be expected from each national contingent and what could 

not, and they adapted to that. Mutual trust grew. It was not instantaneous and did not appear 

without investment of energy by successive SFOR commanders. For all these reasons, the range 

of actions open to General Meigs in 1999 was beyond the grasp of General Crouch and General 

Shinseki in 1996-97, and the challenges were decidedly different for all three. An important 

lesson of Bosnian operations remains the simple truth that alliances do not have armies, nations 

do--and alliance use of those forces almost always comes with strings attached.

With the reluctance of the international community to send a larger force to Bosnia, the 

incremental approach to peace implementation was always necessary. SFOR was never large 

enough to do everything at once, so that some actions had to be postponed until the conditions 

could be established to undertake them successfully. Refugee return, a major international 

goal, was always hostage to the general security of the countryside and the reliability of the 

various Bosnian police and judicial authorities. “Forces, not force” was the basic operational 

and tactical technique adopted early and developed over time. It was based on acquisition 

of timely intelligence and a good deal of anticipation. Where either was lacking, as at Brcko 

in 1997 and Drvar in 1998, disciplined soldiers earned their pay. There simply was no way to 

force the Bosnian redoubt without much greater investment in coercive forces. But that would 

have brought in turn only the peace of full military occupation, not the sought-for creation of a 

Western model of self-government.

The progressive reduction in the Entity armies, sequestration of their weapons, restrictions 

on their training and activities, and their general rebalancing created a situation in which 

supervising them required less force presence. This allowed SFOR force reductions and their 

branching out into more civil constabulary activities. The eclipse of the threat of the faction 

armies coincided, however, with the rise to greater prominence of nonmilitary instruments of 

resistance--television networks, corrupt or politicized police, veteran and returnee organizations, 

shadowy cartels, and organized crowds--all used to confound Dayton implementation once the 

faction armies were more or less securely in their boxes. This was the situation in which the 

Multinational Specialized Unit (MSU) became the force of choice as the SFOR reserve. By 1999, 

the faction military problem was well under control, though it still represented a potential 

threat as opposed to an immediate challenge. Because the potential for renewed armed conflict 

remained, SFOR remained in place, but after Kosovo it became smaller and less central to 

international efforts. The withdrawal of the four-star commander in October 1999, the reduced 

SFOR presence in joint press conferences, the British withdrawal of its framework division 

headquarters in 2000, and the announced transfer of SFOR command from SHAPE to AFSOUTH 

in January 2001,5 are all indicative of the downward trend. President-elect George Bush’s stated 

intention to remove US forces from the Balkans by the end of his term in 2005 (marking the end 

of a decade’s presence) reflects not so much a change of direction as confirmation of an already 

apparent pattern.

What broad observations can one make after surveying the actions of the three senior 

commanders treated here? First of all, one must conclude that the service component 

commanders are essential links in the US joint defense structure. They and their headquarters 

provide both the technical expertise necessary to organize, prepare, and employ service forces 

effectively, and the day-to-day support necessary for their sustainment throughout a prolonged 

operation. In the case of Bosnia operations, the ability to form task-organized force packages 

and to identify and provide special functional enablers to both US and alliance headquarters 

required a good deal of specialized service knowledge not generally available in a joint 

headquarters. Service components also see to the delivery of forces to the area of operations, 

which in a theater the size of EUCOM is often a major operation in itself. In a very real sense, the 
278

Army no longer goes to war, Army forces do, but the requirement to form those forces, prepare 

them, deploy them, sustain them, replace them, and recover them, still must be met by service 

commanders and staffs familiar with the inner workings of their particular arm. Not least 

important is the knowledge of how long it takes to prepare a force and what it takes to deploy 

it. General Crouch’s actions preparing the several type-force packages for possible Balkan 

missions in 1995 were essential to the success of the forces deployed under NATO operational 

command that December. In the highly ambiguous policy environment of the day, a good deal 

of well-informed anticipation was called for. 

Service components provide the vital link to mediate between departmental long-range 

goals and programs and the theater commander’s more immediate and midrange requirements. 

The efforts of all three USAREUR Commanders to reshape their organizations and set the 

conditions necessary to succeed in future EUCOM or NATO contingencies within resource 

constraints imposed by the Department were essential to the continued health of the command. 

Moreover, service components perform a vital fiscal role within their department and theater 

command, best illustrated in this study by General Crouch’s Efficiencies Program imposed 

simultaneously with the execution of the first post-drawdown deployment (and the first NATO 

out of area deployment through the territory of the former Warsaw Pact). General Meigs and 

Major General Hondo Campbell’s Vision Process faces an even greater fiscal challenge as this 

study comes to a close, largely because of the consequences of Crouch’s success as well as the 

current ambiguity in the US view of its continued role in Europe. 

One might conclude that a four-star general is a useful tool for the SACEUR to commit to 

solve a complex problem, as George Joulwan showed in his various employments of General 

Crouch. The cost of committing a senior component commander to a prolonged operational 

task is twofold. First of all, there is the opportunity cost.6 Reshaping USAREUR to its new 

contingency force role was unquestionably prolonged by the absence of the USAREUR 

Commander, electronic connectivities, executive jets, and periodic visits notwithstanding. The 

second cost involves the nature of very senior subordinates. Four-star generals are presidential 

appointees. That gives them a certain independence when their views are in conflict with their 

boss, the Commander in Chief, Europe (CINCEUR). They have their own connections to national 

strategic authorities through their service chiefs on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the theater 

commander in chief’s ability to conform them to his views depends to a marked extent on his 

own standing with the chairman and his political masters. The relationship of the CINC to the 

component commander, Title 10 notwithstanding, is therefore not always strictly hierarchical. 

Four-star subordinates cannot be dealt with like recalcitrant lieutenants, particularly where the 

CINC is out in front of his departmental leaders. “Four star generals,” as one of the subjects of 

this manuscript told the author, “sometimes get to say no.”

In the context of conducting military operations in Europe, this study offers a number of broad 

insights. The post-Cold War drawdown left a hollow corps in Europe. That was not necessarily 

a mistake, so long as its consequences were acknowledged and acceptable. When they were not, 

a good deal of brute force had to be applied along with an equal amount of creative thinking. 

The corps headquarters seems to be accepted as the price of admission to NATO planning, 

and the requirement for immediate deployment of a full corps from Europe came to seem less 

likely than it was in the early 1990s. The Army in Europe has proved remarkably adept at 

modular thinking and behavior, and the structure left in place has generally been adequate to 

the task. USAREUR Headquarters and V Corps appear to have found a functional division of 

responsibility that suits both and meets the needs of the national military strategy. USAREUR 

today is a generator of well-equipped and highly trained contingency forces. Certainly events 

in the Balkans have demonstrated a critical requirement for those.

Planning in NATO is circumscribed by the requirement for consensus prior to anticipation. 
279

General Joulwan’s use of USAREUR to anticipate possibilities for NATO action is therefore 

likely to continue to be the norm so long as the US aspires to alliance leadership. Contingency 

planning remains a parallel process. The genius of strategic leaders comes in their ability to 

imagine long-range possibilities and prepare for them, committing resources just in time, which 

is always inconvenient to the tacticians who have to execute their schemes. Parallel planning 

demands a high degree of information exchange, particularly as initial assumptions prove to be 

unfounded in the event. This lesson was not lost on Colonel Greg Fontenot, who unexpectedly 

found himself unloading his trains on the Sava rather than at an intermediate staging base in 

Hungary.

Peace operations require a high degree of situational awareness, albeit a more diffuse 

kind than in classic warfare. Developing this awareness has three essential parts. First, the 

commander has to discover what his authorities and missions are. He has to go to the zinc 

mines, as General Crouch’s staff would say, because these authorities and missions are unlikely 

to be spelled out to him in a single clear source like, say, a NATO order. NATO orders may 

constrain him by assigning specific tasks and authorities, but the international and diplomatic 

audience he deals with will not necessarily be inclined to accept the SACEUR’s written decision 

as final, nor will the SACEUR necessarily interpret these consistently (nor for that matter will 

the legal adviser of a donated battalion or brigade within the command). 

Second, the most difficult task confronting SFOR commanders (as opposed to their 

subordinate divisional commanders) seems to have been gaining an understanding of the 

nature of the problem facing them and recognizing when it changed. Peace operations are 

fundamentally different from traditional Napoleonic military campaigns against bureaucratic 

armies. In a situation where all normal structures of society have disappeared, a host of shadowy 

substitutes develop over time to meet the social needs of the population. Human intelligence 

and the identification of the underlying governing structures are an essential task, requiring 

a great deal of patient spadework and thinking unconstrained by bureaucratic organization 

charts. Still, throughout the constantly shifting challenges of Bosnia, the tactical requirement for 

disciplined, flexible, and adaptable soldiers at the critical point on the ground never diminished. 

Disciplined, tactically proficient soldiers remain the operational commander’s coin of the realm. 

The most sophisticated analysis was of no value if the sergeant in command of the checkpoint 

responded carelessly. It is in the union of tactically proficient soldiers/units with operationally 

sophisticated higher commanders that the principles and purposes expressed in Title 10 find 

their most effective resolution in spite of the contradiction some appear to find between them. 

To a marked degree, SFOR headquarters remained a learning organization, with successive 

commanders continually reassessing and redefining the battlefield upon which they found 

themselves. This is partly attributable to the US Army’s passion for the after-action review 

process. It is also partly attributable to the intellectual curiosity of higher commanders and 

senior staff officers like John Sylvester and J. B. Burns.

Third, any alliance commander must seek to maintain continuous understanding of the 

capabilities and quirks his subordinate international elements and parallel civilian agencies 

bring to the table to assist (or confound) him in accomplishing his goals. He has to be willing 

to accept that his powers of persuasion are just as vital as his powers of command. He must 

be a statesman as well as a general--able to compromise and cooperate with civil officials who 

don’t necessarily value his desire for unity of command, or even unity of effort, much less his 

hierarchy of tasks. Integrity and patience are cardinal virtues in peace operations. In peace 

operations, as in war, it remains the man at the center who will succeed or fail.
280

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 12

1. It is difficult to find a proper term to describe the forced imposition of values and systems on a people by 

representatives of foreign states (or their associations) for altruistic rather than commercial reasons. Imperialism, 

since Lenin, carries a connotation of a hope for economic gain of which the international community has been 

largely innocent in Bosnia. On the other hand, Bosnia under Dayton has evolved into an international protectorate 

in which representatives of the international community have imposed a foreign political system on the people of 

Bosnia, largely without their consent.

2. “To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings.” Thucydides, The 

Peloponnesian War, trans., Rex Warner (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1954), p. 236. 

3. Secretary General George Robertson of the United Kingdom has been quite open about NATO’s intentions to 

pursue war criminals. See NATO, Press Release (2000) 093, 13 October 2000, Statement by Secretary General of NATO; 

Actions by SFOR to detain persons indicted for war crimes. Available on line at http://www.nato.int/docu/ pr/2000/p00-

093e.htm.

4. Made to the author shortly after Clark took command as SACEUR.

5. “AFSOUTH Briefing Jan 11”, entry in HQ SFOR, Transcript: Joint Press Conference, 9 January 2001, Coalition 

Press Information Center, Tito Barracks.

6. That is the loss of alternative employment elsewhere. Opportunity cost is a concept from economics.
281

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Document Collections.

HQ SFOR. Office of the Commander. Administrative Office. Shinseki and Meigs Papers.

HQ USAREUR. Office of the Commander. Commander’s Initiatives Group. Crouch, Shinseki, and Meigs Papers.

HQ USAREUR. Secretary of the General Staff. Daily Staff Journals.

HQ USAREUR. Office of the Commander. History Office. Crouch, Shinseki, and Meigs Papers.

Books.

Bildt, Carl. Peace Journey: The Struggle for Peace in Bosnia. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998.

Burg, Steven L. and Shoup, Paul S. The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention. 

Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharp, 1999.

Clark, Wesley K. Waging Modern War; Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat. New York, 2001.

Daalder, Ivo H. Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution 

Press, 2000.

Holbrooke, Richard. To End a War. New York: Random House, 1998.

Ignatieff, Michael. The Warrior’s Honor. New York: Henry Holt & Company, Inc.,1998.

______________ . Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 2000.

Malcom, Noel. Bosnia: A Short History. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Sudetic, Chuck. Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia. New York: W. W. Norton & 

Company, 1998.

Wentz, Larry, et al. Lessons from Bosnia: The IFOR Experience. Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic 

Studies, 1997.

Woodward, Susan. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings 

Institution, 1995.

Reports.

Buchanan, William B., et al. Operation Joint Endeavor--Description and Lessons Learned (Planning and Deployment 

Phases). Institute for Defense Analyses. IDA Paper P-3210. November 1996.

General Accounting Office. Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, June 1998, Bosnia Peace 

Operations--Pace of Implementing Dayton Accelerated as International Involvement Increased. GAO/

NSID-980138.

General Accounting Office. Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, May 1997, Bosnia Peace

Operations – Progress Toward Achieving the Dayton Agreements Goals. GAO/NSID-97-132.

HQ 1ST Armored Division. TF Eagle After Action Report, 20 Dec ‘95—10 Nov 96. ([Copied version] obtained from V 

Corps History Office.)
282

HQ USAREUR. Office of the Commander in Chief. Operation Joint Endeavor: USAREUR Headquarters After Action 

Report. 2 Vols. May 1997.

HQ USAREUR. Chief of Staff. Operation Joint Guard After Action Report. (November 1998).

HQ V Corps. History Office. Operation Joint Endeavor: V Corps After Action Review: Central Region Operations. 

International Crisis Group. Is Dayton Failing? Bosnia Four Years After the Peace Agreement. 28 October 1999.

International Crisis Group. November Elections: Dayton Stumbles. 18 December 2000.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. U.S. Participation in Bosnia: Hearing Before the Committee 

on Armed Services. 104th Cong., 2nd sess., August 1, October 2, 3, 1996.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services. Hearings. Department of Defense Authorization for 

Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1998 and the Future Years Defense Programs: Unified Commanders on Their Military

Strategies and Operational Requirements. 105th Cong., 1st sess., March 18, 1997.

Key Internet Sites.

International Crisis Group. http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/default.cfm.

International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. http://www.un.org/icty/index.html.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. http://www.nato.int.

Office of the High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina. http://www.ohr.int.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe--Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina. http://www.oscebih.org.

Stabilization Force (SFOR Informer). http://www.nato.int/sfor.
283

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RICHARD M. SWAIN is a retired U.S. Army colonel, and is currently Olin Professor of 

Officership at the William E. Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic, at West Point. 

Dr. Swain graduated from West Point in 1966 and was commissioned in the Field Artillery. 

He served two tours in the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam, served twice in the 82nd Airborne 

Division Artillery, and commanded a field artillery battalion in VII Corps Artillery in Germany 

from 1981 to 1983. During the 1991 Gulf War, Dr. Swain served as Theater Army Historian 

on the staff of Third Army and subsequently wrote an account of the Third Army’s role in the 

conflict titled “Lucky War”; Third Army in Desert Storm. Dr. Swain retired from active duty in 

1994 and served for 5 years as Director of the senior service college fellowship (AOASF) at the 

School of Advanced Military Studies. In 1999, he was hired by USAREUR to prepare a study 

of senior leadership in Bosnia. Dr. Swain served on the history faculty at West Point and later 

was Director of the Combat Studies Institute at the Command and General Staff College, Fort 

Leavenworth, Kansas. He is a graduate of the Command and General Staff College and the 

Army Senior Operational Fellowship at the School for Advanced Military Studies and received 

his Ph.D. in history from Duke University in 1975. 
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Robert R. Ivany

Commandant

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