NewsHour Online: Admiral Smith Interview

NEWSMAKER WITH NAVY ADMIRAL LEIGHTON SMITH

February 1, 1996

TRANSCRIPT
The commander of the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, U.S. Navy Admiral Leighton Smith, talks with Charlayne Hunter-Gault about troop deployment and expectations.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The troops have been on the ground now for a little more than a month. How do you assess the mission so far?
ADM. SMITH: A success.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: How do you say that? Why do you say that?
ADM. SMITH: Well, first of all, we need to put this in the right context. I want to convey to you the military aspects of what we're doing. But we have seen compliance at D plus 7. We saw--
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What is that?
ADM. SMITH: I'm sorry. D-Day is the day of the transfer of authority, that day that I took command of the situation from the United Nations. D plus 7 we had 40 sites around Sarajevo, bunkers, observation posts, checkpoints that were to be gone. They all were gone D plus 8 basically, because it took us that long to get in and really look at 'em. D plus 30 was another milestone in the zones of separation, there's almost 950 kilometers of former line of confrontation. The peace agreement requires that two kilometers either side of that line be empty of troops and/or weapons. At D plus 30 most of those were gone. All of the troops and all but about twenty-five or twenty-three of the heavy equipment, and subsequent investigation, generally proved out that the equipment that was remaining in there was derelict, of no military value, so from a military perspective, we have seen compliance, a couple of dragging of feet in there, militarily though we're in pretty good shape. I'm not as sanguine about some of the other areas. The prisoner release I think is still--you know, that's tangled up, and the ICRC has got responsibility for that auditing trail for prisoner release.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: That is International Committee of the Red Cross.
ADM. SMITH: That's correct. I'm sorry, I use these little acronyms, but they believe that there is probably eighty-nine or ninety people who are still being detained that they have on their lists. Some of those may be suspected war criminals, and the sides do have the--they have the right to detain further those that are suspected of war crimes, but the ICRC, or International Committee of the Red Cross, is working on that problem.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But some have suggested that maybe some of the reasons have to deal with the side doing the detaining, getting some kind of leverage.
ADM. SMITH: Yeah, and that's what happened early on, Charlayne. We had--we had sides hanging conditions on the release of these prisoners. When you go to the peace agreement, it doesn't say anything about a conditional release.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Are you going to do anything about this? I mean, is that within your mandate, to go in there and say, let them go and let them go now?
ADM. SMITH: No, in fact, it's not in my mandate, and I don't think there's much that I personally can do about it from a military perspective. It was a political decision to release these prisoners unconditionally. It was a political decision that hung some conditions on them as we got to the point where they should have been released; therefore, it is a political decision to comply. There many more real elements involved than just military, political, diplomatic, being--and economic being three. And so I would rather see the continued pressure from the political side on the political leadership that stills holds these prisoners. That's the way to get their attention here.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is your full complement of troops in place now? What is the number?
ADM. SMITH: Not quite yet. We're looking today at on the order of forty-five to forty-eight thousand IFOR troops out of the sixty that we expect to come in. But I think we're right on track, and it's good news.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And from how many countries?
ADM. SMITH: Well, my goodness. I wish you hadn't asked that question. Fifteen NATO countries, one of our sixteen NATO countries does not have an armed force, so we have fifteen countries in NATO and then there are probably fifteen or seventeen that are represented.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the Russians are there now too?
ADM. SMITH: The Russians arrived in force. My understanding is this morning that they're all there, and they're now deploying up into what we call Multinational Division North under Gen. Nash's leadership.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Did any bells go off? I mean, this is the first post-Cold War engagement between the two former enemies.
ADM. SMITH: Well, you know, it's interesting there, Charlayne, we've got more than just Russians. There are Hungarians in there, there are Ukrainians in there. We're going to get Bulgarians, I think, if they sort out what they want to send. We've got a lot of former adversaries. We've got a huge base in Hungary that's supporting the U.S. forces that are operating out of Tuzla, in Bosnia. So it's exciting in that a lot of these former adversaries of ours are part and parcel to this peace process.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: With no problem?
ADM. SMITH: None.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What is the biggest problem you're facing now?
ADM. SMITH: False expectations.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: From whom?
ADM. SMITH: From everybody, frankly. We have--the problem is this. The peace agreement, the military annex to the peace agreement is very straightforward, what my mission is, what my tasks are, when they are to be accomplished. I can get in trouble from straying beyond that into "mission creep" just as quickly as I can for not doing my job. Unfortunately, a lot of people read our peace agreement and they interpret my job for me. And they are very happy to tell whoever might want to listen what my job is.
ADM. SMITH: Well, one of the aspects of the Bosnia--of the Dayton accord was freedom of movement, and there have been reports that people from different areas are not being allowed freedom of movement. What happens when some IFOR force is observing that one of the forces is not allowing freedom of movement? Do you get involved in that?
ADM. SMITH: It depends on what the situation is, Charlayne. I'll give you an example. The IFOR mission is to provide freedom of movement for IFOR forces, not for civilians throughout the country. One of the misunderstood parts of this is that there is no prohibition against a police checkpoint. Now, what those police do at that checkpoint we have a personal interest in. There's an international police task force that should be in position to monitor these police checkpoints to make sure that the police are conducting themselves in a proper way.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But I've been--I've read that only 40 of 400--
ADM. SMITH: You got it.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: --are there. How much of a problem is that?
ADM. SMITH: Well, right now it's a pretty big problem.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Does it put a strain on the military?
ADM. SMITH: Not really, because what we're watching very closely--but we can't--I mean, that's a big country, and people think, well, 60,000 forces, you, Smith, you can take care of that little problem, but when you start talking about the communicators we've got, the intelligence organizations, the size of the staffs, the engineers, the mechanics, the people that are supporting the organization above and beyond the soldier on the ground or in the Humvee that's going around checking these places, we don't have a lot of people to spread out all over that country. So we can't--we can't guarantee that a police checkpoint that's established, which is a right, is going to conduct themselves in a way that is acceptable. And we know that some of them have not, so we go in when we know that. We'll establish a presence, we'll watch what they do, and when we're there, they behave themselves.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The same thing apparently applies to the police force.
ADM. SMITH: Yes.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: There are reports of a lot of crooks and thugs and extortionists and all kinds of bad actors in the police force. What happens when they abuse the citizens in front of IFOR people?
ADM. SMITH: If we see clear cases of abuse, or police conduct that goes well beyond acceptable standards of behavior, we are authorized to step in, and we will step in. We're trying to get one police chief relieved. I've already written the president of the country about that, and I'll just leave it that. We won't talk about who or why, except the police chief, the wild part of it is that the police chief is clearly conducting himself in a way and has been conducting himself in a way that is unacceptable.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Let me just briefly ask you--because there have been reports of increasing sniper fire around one of the Serbian-held suburbs, and one of the attacks has been against an American, what is causing that and what are you doing about that, and how much of a problem is it?
ADM. SMITH: It's a big problem, and very early on, even before we went into Bosnia, we estimated that three of the principal concerns would be, one, mines, and they clearly have been and continue to be a problem, road traffic accidents, and the rogue elements that will take the law into their hands and try to disrupt this process. We saw snipers very early on, and we expected frankly to see snipers at about D plus 45. The area you are talking about is Ilidza. Ilidz is one of the suburbs of Sarajevo that is transferring from Serbs to Bosnians.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In a couple of days.
ADM. SMITH: In just a couple of days. What we strongly suspect obviously is that there is a Serb or some Serbs in there, and all of them have arms. I mean, just about every male in the country has a gun. They're sitting back in the back side of some apartment and they're taking shots at our forces as they go through. We've had four incidents in the last couple of days.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is it to test the authority of your forces?
ADM. SMITH: I think it's a little of everything. It's a guy letting off steam. You know, that's the way they do business in some cases over there. It's a guy testing the authority of IFOR, but let me assure you, that we have one, anti-sniping teams and we will employ them. We are working with the mayor of Ilidza, who by the way, has published a letter, an open letter to his own people saying knock this off, this is really, I mean, this is crazy.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that going to work?
ADM. SMITH: It might. But we also see that Bosnian--I mean, the Serb mayor of Ilidza, taking responsibility. I mean, he is going to put his police force against this problem. Let me make a point. The parties signed up to this agreement. It is up to them, in my view, to control that kind of behavior just as much as it is up to us.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But if they don't control it?
ADM. SMITH: Well, if we see the perpetrator, we'll attack, no warning, attack.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Have you and Richard Goldstone, who heads the international war crimes tribunal, worked out your disagreements about your role in monitoring the grave sites of suspected mass murders and of conducting safe passage for the investigators?
ADM. SMITH: Let me correct a misconception. We never had a disagreement. Judge Goldstone knows that we are not going to guard grave sites. It is simply not part of my job. And it is not something I can do. Charlayne, there are an estimated in some cases two to three hundred grave sites in Bosnia. Someone asked me, well, can you surround it with barbed wire, and just kind of wire it off--the mines that are so popular that everybody talks about--not popular but certainly the mines where the potential site of this mass grave site--one small part of that mine is two kilometers by two kilometers--that's 8,000 yards roughly around--now, how am I going to put barbed wire around that? And it would take an enormous number of people to guard that grave site or any other. What we're going to do is we're going to work very closely with Judge Goldstone and his people. We've asked him to prioritize what's important to him in terms of sites. We have dedicated reconnaissance assets, both land and air, to include fixed wing and helicopters, to fly around so that we watch these sites that he gives us to try to make sure that no one is tampering with those. Between the 12th of January and the 27th of January, we flew over 45 events against some of these areas. So we can watch 'em pretty close.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: How do you assess the process of reconciliation in Bosnia today, and do you foresee that you'll be able to get out there in the year that you have set as the end point of the mission?
ADM. SMITH: Yeah. Well, let me make a couple of points. One, I didn't set the end point. My political master set that end point, and I don't think it's going to change. I think we can do the military part of this in one year. I tell the people in Bosnia, I can't bring peace to Bosnia. That's got to come from within. What I can do is to bring a force in here that will assist you in doing something you haven't been able to do, separate the warring factions, former warring factions, establish some confidence in your ability to remain separated and begin to trust each other that this force isn't moving here, therefore, this force has got to move there, first shot fired ten more come in, crazy. Yesterday, we put a Bosnian Serb and a Muslim and one of our own force's commanders in a helicopter and flew down a zone of separation. That's something that nobody could do before.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is it your sense that there is now a will for peace among the warring factions?
ADM. SMITH: I think the people of Bosnia fundamentally want to stop this fighting, they really do want to stop.CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But the warring factions, different from the people.
ADM. SMITH: Well, I think not. I mean, the people make up the armies, and let's face it, in most societies of this world if the people want to stop fighting, something will happen to cause that to occur. Let me tell you, though, there's an enormous amount of hate, suspicion and fear, a lot of it, enough to go around. There are a lot of weapons in that country, so I don't know that, I mean, I can tell you that the military aspects of this peace agreement will be done in one year. I don't have much doubt about that. What I can't guarantee is that the political process within the parties will have matured, nor will there be sufficient visible reconstruction to cause everybody to say going forward is a lot smarter than going back. But I think Karl Bildt is on the right road. The World Bank is in there. We've got a lot of people working right now to get the elections on track, resettle refugees, that's the UNHCR, the International Community of the Red Cross is working. We see checkbooks, you know, I want to see checkbooks, cranes, and bulldozers; that's what's going to cause peace in that country, when they can see visible evidence of rebuilding a country that's been devastated by war. And they will want to go forward towards construction, rather than back towards destruction. I'm convinced of that.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Adm. Smith, thank you for joining us.
ADM. SMITH: Thank you for having me.


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