Bosnia’s Army of Strange Bedfellows

PAZARIC, Bosnia-Herzegovina — In a dandelion field where thick green grass is ankle-deep, American trainers run Bosnian Muslim and Croat soldiers through the drill of dismantling, cleaning, loading and crawling with their new M-16 rifles.

A few miles away, another group of retired U.S. Army officers guides Muslim army captains as they plot battle maneuvers on sophisticated computers. “The aggressor” is red, “friendlies” are blue. One of the captains, ensconced in a simulated log-cabin bunker, calls in an artillery strike.

And at an old truck-repair factory nearby, young soldiers practice driving M60A3 tanks. One roaring machine jerks and rumbles up a concrete ramp, and the men laugh.

Here in the hills of south-central Bosnia, 200 Americans are attempting to mold an army of Muslims and Croats into a professional fighting force that will give pause to potential enemies, especially neighboring Serbs. The training is part of a $400-million program, paid for by the U.S. government and a coalition of Islamic countries, that also will supply the army of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation with tanks, helicopters, heavy artillery, 45,000 rifles and ammunition.

U.S. officials say their efforts will help preserve peace by enabling the Muslim-Croat army to defend itself--which, in turn, will make it easier for Washington to withdraw American troops from Bosnia-Herzegovina next year. The challenge is enormous: forcing distrustful Muslims and Croats to work together, while weaning them away from their armies’ Communist-era doctrine.

But critics, including many U.S. allies in Europe, say the “train-and-equip” program will further destabilize the region by promoting war, not peace.

“Linked with the U.S. threat to withdraw next summer, train-and-equip rightly or wrongly creates the impression that the Bosnians might as well prepare for war rather than attempt to build their joint governing institutions,” said a European official involved in securing peace in Bosnia. “It would be much better to remove the war option. There is a feeling among Bosnians that the international community is preparing to cut and run.”

A confidential report prepared for the NATO-led force stationed in Bosnia predicted that train-and-equip would make the Muslims more aggressive and trigger further resistance from the Serbs, while the Croats would cooperate as long as their own separatist agenda allowed.

Atlantic alliance officers have been critical of the program for introducing weapons into a still-volatile land where the armies routinely violate a regional arms control agreement. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is attempting to keep its distance so it can maintain its stated goal of impartiality, but its 32,000-strong force is in charge of monitoring all training and military movements that take place on Bosnian soil.

James Pardew, the U.S. diplomat who oversees the program, maintains that providing the equipment also encourages Bosnia’s Muslims to sever their links with Iran, which has provided the government in Sarajevo with weapons, intelligence and advice. Delivery of most of the U.S. weapons was delayed for several weeks last year while U.S. officials demanded the removal of a senior Bosnian Defense Ministry official with close ties to Iran.

Contracted to handle the training is a Virginia-based firm called Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), run by retired U.S. military officers who are veterans of Vietnam, Central America and U.S. Special Forces. It is the same company that whipped Croatia’s army into shape in 1995 and sent it into a blistering offensive against Serbian militias, changing the course of the war in Bosnia.

Building the Muslim-Croat army, however, is likely to be a tougher job.

Squabbling Partners

Muslim and Croat politicians remain sharply divided over power and territory, following their own 1993-94 war. Joined in a “federation” by a U.S.-brokered 1994 deal, the two factions rarely cooperate on anything important, refusing to tolerate each other’s refugees and insisting on separate currencies and flags.

Despite a joint defense law that took months to draft, the U.S. trainers have had to postpone plans to integrate the new army. The Defense Ministry and joint command will be integrated, the Americans say, but the army at the corps level and below is expected to remain more segregated for at least three years.

Croatian officers have complained to NATO officials that the Muslims continue to be involved in separate training programs in Islamic countries, while the Muslims complain about the U.S. decision to place a huge state-of-the-art firing range in Croatian territory. It will be the largest NATO-standard range outside of Germany.

MPRI and U.S. officials insist the divisions are being overcome, at least on the ground.

“You give them something to think about other than their differences,” said J. R. Kendall, a former U.S. Army command sergeant major from Jefferson City, Mo., who was supervising M-16 drills at the Federation Military School in Pazaric, about 15 miles west of Sarajevo. “Sweating together--that’s a bonding tool.”

At the school compound on a recent afternoon, young Muslim and Croatian soldiers were training together. But they sat at separate tables for lunch, and they bunk in segregated quarters during their four-week stays.

The Bosnians were candid about the ethnic problems they see. Lt. Col. Tomislav Gadze, a Croat, is deputy commander of the federation school; the commander is Muslim. Gadze said units who train together were chosen carefully to avoid juxtaposing men who might earlier have fought one another.

Gadze himself is on loan from a Bosnian Croat command at Capljina, site of notorious detention camps where Croats rounded up and tortured Muslims in 1993. His greatest worry, he said, is that Muslims will try to dominate the army command as the Serbs did in the former Yugoslav federation. He believes he was discriminated against in the Yugoslav navy, where he was relegated to coast guard duty despite his rank and experience.

“We Croats are afraid the system will be the same as when the Serbs ran things, that the Muslims will replace the Serbs and put the Croats in the same bad positions,” Gadze said at the federation school. “If that happens, then you don’t have a country for everybody.”

MPRI trainers said they are not providing classes or counseling to help the Bosnians overcome ethnic tensions and that they will leave such issues up to the Muslim and Croatian military leaders.

For now, both sides seem willing to go along, even though training is behind schedule. After all, it is in their interest: The men must complete four phases of instruction before they are given custody of the new weapons; artillery now is stored in Muslim territory, ammunition in Croatian territory.

‘Eager to Learn’

“They are eager to learn,” said Kendall, the former sergeant major. “They might make a soldier’s mistake, and then they learn from their mistakes.”

At a refurbished industrial complex in Hadzici, a few miles northeast of Pazaric, soldiers were learning how to use and repair radio systems that would extend communications up to 13 miles. And they were practice-driving 58-ton M60A3 tanks, equipped with 50-caliber machine guns and thermal imaging night vision. Muslim-Croat pairs were teamed up to maneuver the tanks around a concrete staging area.

“We have to forgive, but we cannot forget,” a young Muslim soldier said during a break of the two sides’ former conflict. “You have to keep it in your memory so it doesn’t happen again.”

A Croat in sunglasses agreed: “Everything is still so fresh. It takes just a flame to start a fire. No one knows what will happen here. That’s what we are afraid of.”

The tanks fit into MPRI’s other major task: to transform the Muslim-Croat force from a Communist-like militia to a Western-style, professional army. Most of the fighting in Bosnia was characterized by static, trench warfare conducted by small units with little coordination above the company level.

Especially for the Muslims, who had more men than weapons, emphasis was placed on lightly armed infantry tactics. By contrast, the better-armed Serbs, backed by the Yugoslav national army, were able to shell Muslim positions at will, easily taking 70% of Bosnia in the early months of the war.

A study by the Institute for Defense Analysis, work paid for by the U.S. Defense Department, singled out heavy artillery as the new federation army’s greatest need. The U.S. government recently added 116 155-millimeter short-barrel howitzers to the package it was providing; the federation had had six.

The idea is to introduce mechanized-maneuver warfare that makes the army more mobile, flexible and adaptable while giving it greater firepower, MPRI officials said.

Alija Izetbegovic and Kresimir Zubak--the Muslim and Croatian members, respectively, of Bosnia’s three-person presidency--agreed recently to slash the size of the army’s combat force roughly in half to 35,000. MPRI is encouraging the development of a noncommissioned officers corps.

In the war, “they had to fight with what they had,” said Dick Edwards, a retired U.S. Army colonel from Boston who runs the Simulation Center, an MPRI training facility in Zunovica, a town just south of Hadzici. “We will change their way of thinking about how to fight.”

At best, some of the senior Bosnian commanders were schooled in Warsaw Pact doctrine as members of the former Yugoslav federation’s national army. But for most troops, the only schooling came during more than four years of relatively undisciplined warfare in the Balkans.

“Some of the battalion and brigade commanders were very young guys,” Edwards said. “They went through the war and were thought of as war heroes. They were put in a position of responsibility, but they didn’t have a lot of experience. That doesn’t necessarily make a good commander.”

Those whose training is limited to war are often more difficult to teach because they feel they have seen it all and have nothing to learn, MPRI instructors said.

Several Muslim officers complained that the training was superfluous after their combat experience. And they were disappointed with some of the weapons: The tanks (they thought they would get Bradley fighting vehicles) are too heavy for Bosnian terrain, they said. And instead of Apache attack helicopters, they will be given Huey transport-utility choppers.

At the $1.5-million Simulation Center, built from the ruins of what was a Serb-held garrison bombed by NATO at the end of the war, brigade commanders ran through war scenarios on computers. Inside a simulation bunker, a group of captains plotted the enemy’s position on maps and phoned orders to troops in the field.

Speaking to a reporter, the soldiers toned down their words, following earlier boasts to visitors that they planned to take their new weapons and march to Banja Luka, the largest Bosnian city in Serb-held territory.

“Inshallah [God willing], there will never be another war,” said Sifet Podzic, 37, commander of the 101st Sarajevo Brigade. “But we want a unified country, and unfortunately we have bad neighbors. We must be able to stop them from starting another 1992. . . . If this can’t be solved politically, then we are ready. Now more than ever.”

Serbs Object

The Bosnian Serb leadership is outraged at the train-and-equip program, which it says goes against the spirit of the 18-month-old peace agreement that ended the war. Bosnian Serb leaders warn that it is only a matter of time before there will be a Muslim-Croat offensive.

Senior U.S. officials reject the criticism that they are setting up Bosnia for the next war. But they also are privately delighted that the Serbs are scared.

The official American line is that U.S. efforts will bring the Muslim-Croat force up to par with the Serbs.

But some military experts believe that the balance of power is already shifting and that the combined Muslim-Croat forces already may have an offensive edge over their Bosnian Serb rivals.

In the Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled portion of Bosnia where the economy languishes in decay, the Bosnian Serb army suffers from low morale and poor equipment that has not been adequately maintained, foreign military officials say. Many of its tanks are decrepit. Bosnian Serb leaders have favored special police over the army, whose rank and file have not received paychecks for months.

Further, the Bosnian Serbs have less of a reason to fight. “The only side in the conflict that did not reach its political goals is the Muslim side,” said a senior European military officer. “The Serbs got their republic. The Croats got more land than they had before the war. All the Muslims got was Sarajevo, Tuzla and some mountains.”

Indeed, with the promises of peace faltering in Bosnia, talk of war is growing. Here in Pazaric, less than half a mile from the U.S.-built and U.S.-managed federation training school is the headquarters of Bosnian Muslim Radio. Its broadcasts lately have contained a veritable call to arms: We will never again allow ourselves to be told not to fight for what is ours, the radio announcer says.