Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness. Martin Bell

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СКАЧАТЬ on the whole valley. Kulenic would say, ‘I know that mountain like the back of my hand. I’ve spent my life skiing it. It’s as much mine as it is theirs. One day I’ll ski it again.’ He used to slap me on the back at parties and his eyes would twinkle, ‘Ah, Mike, ti si nas, you’re one of us, I know.’ He knew. He was no fool. You can’t hide your soul from these people. But as for the rest of Bosnia – I hadn’t a clue what was going on behind the scenes. All I knew was that valley; you could feel this terrible tension hanging over it. Croats and some Muslims in Vitez, Croats and Muslims in Novi Travnik and in Travnik and it was all going to blow sky-high. The Lasva valley was a giant pressure cooker waiting to blow. And there we were, sitting in the middle trying to keep the lid on things, but knowing secretly that something was coming our way. It was just a question of time.

      Then one day in February this enormous 25-kilo parcel arrives for me. It’s from General Jackson in London. There was a note too, ‘Well done for delivering the parcel. Here’s another. This is your own personal humanitarian mission.’ So that was it. I became Postman Pat but the problem was, how to get it into Sarajevo. Although it was nearer than Split it was harder to get in. You had to have a damn good reason to go into that French colony. You couldn’t just hop off to Sarajevo and besides, apart from their Mortar Platoon, the Cheshires rarely went in there. So the parcel stayed in Vitez.

      In the meantime I had to go up to Tuzla and cover the Op CABINET crossings while Nick Costello was away on R&R. The Cheshires had just acquired a new 2IC, Major Bryan Watters, who had come from commanding the Jungle Warfare Centre in Brunei and he and OC HQ Company, another major, wanted to visit Tuzla, so, the three of us drove up in a Land Rover. The journey was indescribable, horrendous – them in the front with a heater and me in the back shivering in a sleeping bag – along the worst routes over the worst mountains in the world. At one point the route comes within sight of the Serb front lines at Bomb Alley, which you have to scoot along as fast as possible while they fire mortars and cannons at you. Monty, a lieutenant in the 9/12 Lancers, was the first to return fire at them from his Scimitar and just hurled 30mm shells back at them. But most of the time the Serbs had the upper hand – Land Rovers and aid trucks don’t come furnished with 30mm RARDEN cannons.

      Tuzla was a real break from Vitez. First off, it was B Sqn 9/12 Lancers all on their own up there in a few blocks at Dubrave military airfield. They shared this with the BiH who operated their Hip helicopters from there and thus attracted Serb artillery fire. The airfield was overlooked by a hill called the Vis feature about ten kilometres away. The Serbs were on that too – the name of the game in war is ‘grab the high ground’. This airfield was huge, flat and had plenty of redundant runways. Tuzla itself was half an hour’s drive away. Most of the aid agencies were up there trying to help this rather large and beleaguered town. The centrepiece was the Tuzla hotel, home to all the internationals including the press.

      Conditions at the airfield were spartan. There was no fresh food as there was no refrigerator, so we were all on compo permanently. B Sqn were a very relaxed and professional bunch. Captain Tim Hercock had been left in charge while Alan Abraham was on leave. Dave Bennett was the Ops Officer and Mark Cooper was the LO in Tuzla and knew the place and ‘smells’ inside out. But the weird thing was there was no work for me there either. Not a single convoy was crossing the front line at Kalesija. One day the Mayor of Tuzla, Selim Beslagic, just ups and says, ‘We’re not accepting your UN aid until you do something about our Muslim brothers in Cerska. We can’t accept your aid while they’re being ethnically cleansed by the aggressor.’ Just like that. It floored us. Each day we’d drive down to Kalesija to escort an aid convoy from Belgrade across the line and each day zip, nothing. The BiH refused to let anything cross into their territory. Clever tactic, but they had a point – morally they couldn’t allow food aid convoys from Belgrade, transiting Serb-held territory, to enter Tuzla, be unloaded and then scoff the food while Muslims in Eastern Bosnia were being cleansed out of their homes.

      This didn’t come out of nowhere. It had its origins back on 7 January. The Muslims weren’t just holed up in Gorazde. There was an enclave in a deep valley at Zepa and another in a valley at Srebrenica. On 7 January a BiH fighting patrol hoofs it out of Srebrenica and trashes a number of Serb villages along the Drina. Then the Chetniks in Sarajevo murder the Bosnian Deputy Prime Minister. Serbs in Eastern Bosnia go wild at the trashing of their villages which triggers a wave of ethnic cleansing around Zvornik, Cerska and in a broad valley called Konjevic Polje. Most of this goes unreported simply because there’s no press to report it. So the first we really hear of it is when the Mayor of Tuzla forbids UN aid.

      The UN effort in Tuzla ground to a halt. Hercock, Cooper and I popped down to the UNHCR office where Anders Levinson, a Danish ex-footballer and now head of office in Tuzla, shows us his plan to relieve the town. I’m not sure he’d quite grasped what was going on. They didn’t want our food. His plan horrifies us because he’s planning to fly Herc-loads of food into the airfield, just like that. None of this has been cleared with anyone and it would have ended in disaster. The Serbs would have shelled the shit out of the airfield, destroyed the aircraft and claimed that the UN was gunrunning for the Muslims. At Sarajevo there were Serb inspectors, who checked the aircraft and the aid, but at Tuzla there were none. You just couldn’t up and do an airlift into the place, and even then you can’t force people to eat your food.

      After a week of this there’s no point me hanging around Tuzla so, one night, Mark Cooper and I hoof it down to Vitez in his Land Rover. He’s off on R&R. A lot starts happening very quickly. We’re into the beginning of March now. The snow has begun to melt, Nick and Alan Abraham come back from R&R and that night we’re having a huge dinner in the Bosna restaurant because quite a few of the Cheshires’ officers are leaving early, posted to other jobs in the UK. Either Nick or I have to go back up to Tuzla; we agree that it should be me. But the next morning Nick’s up before me. I’m in tatters and not ready to catch the transport but Nick’s not bothered. He likes it up in Tuzla and agrees to take my place. That was pure fate. That’s how delicately your life hangs in the balance. Anything can affect the course of events including a hangover!

      Meantime, because of the business in Srebrenica, General Morillon’s touch paper has been lit. He blasts off from the Residency in Sarajevo, comes screaming out of the city like an Exocet, turns right and disappears up to Tuzla and Zvornik, trailing hot gasses. He grabs Alan and Nick and they probe south through Serb territory, trying to make contact, to halt this wave of ethnic cleansing. Without Nick and Alan he somehow makes it into Srebrenica with his interpreter, a giant Macedonian/Frenchman called Mihajlov, and his British MA, a fluent French speaker called Major Piers Tucker. Once in Srebrenica he hoists the UN flag over the small PTT building, promises solidarity and pledges that Srebrenica will never be abandoned. Very brave, but he’s marooned there with no contact except through the Muslims’ ham radio. C130s then start dropping food aid right across Eastern Bosnia, mainly into Gorazde, Zepa, Srebrenica and Cerska.

      Confused reports start coming out of Srebrenica. No one’s quite sure what Morillon’s status is there. BHC is in a flap and there’s a rumour that Morillon and his gang are actually hostages of Naser Oric, the BiH commander in the pocket. Another report suggests that Morillon, who has been in there a week or so by this time, is in dire straits – no food, nothing. And then this little message slips out of Srebrenica, ‘Send more Davidoff cigars!’ Cool! But you’ve got this general stuck in this pocket barking for more cigars while down in Split there’s this unit of French Special Forces all set to bust into the valley and rescue him. Madness! After about nine days he makes it out and reappears in Zvornik where the enraged population goes insane, kicks his car, spits at him and screams, ‘Morillon is a liar!’

      He fails to get back into Srebrenica so returns to Sarajevo to plan the relief of the pocket. I remember driving up to BHC one day with Bob Stewart who tells me that one plan is to drop paratroopers into the enclave. He asks me what I think. I’ve already looked at the map and tell him, ‘Madness! Only if you want them all to get broken legs. It’s a steep-sided and heavily wooded valley, not a frigging drop zone. Can only be done by free-fall or by СКАЧАТЬ