Battle Ready

his place to support or oppose it during the negotiations. His place, as he saw it, was to find a road to peace.

When I became involved with the HDC, I was clear up front to all parties in the negotiations: I’m not making judgments here, I’m not here to judge. I’m here to help you resolve this fight peacefully. My government’s position is clear; that’s what it is. But I am not part of the government in this respect; and it’s not my job to come in and sell my government’s line. I don’t have a line. I don’t have a position.

I learned a long time ago that a negotiator has to be nonjudgmental.

Later that year, when I became involved in trying to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, I was immediately hit from both sides to take a position. There was no way I could do that.

Who’s more right? The Israelis? The Palestinians? Who has greater justice on their side? Who has suffered more? How can anyone measure these things? And even if you could, how could you shape these measurements into the perfect balance that will result in a peaceful settlement?

As a mediator, you reach peace by finding a position that both sides can agree to and practice on the ground. We’ll never get there by trying to determine which side is more righteous or “deserving” than the other. It’s important to speak out about unacceptable actions, but your task is to help the parties find a lasting solution that all can live with over time.

So when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked me, “How do you weigh this issue? Where do you put the weight in terms of this situation?” I said:

“I don’t do that.”

Sharon did not reply. He didn’t like the answer.

“I don’t make judgments,” I continued. “There are things that are unacceptable to me, such as terrorist acts where innocents are killed. I reject that. I condemn those things. But in the process of negotiation, the mediator can’t allow himself to be put in a position where he starts to form or make judgments. I am here to facilitate both sides finding a workable solution to this situation. One that they and their children can live with.”

Obviously, judgments will inevitably creep into your thinking; but you have to resist them. You have to be really hard on yourself and reject taking any positions that come out of these judgments.

And even when you don’t form judgments, you’re still going to get hit by both sides.

In mid-July, Zinni flew to Geneva for his introduction to the HDC staff and his first meeting with the Indonesian government and GAM officials.

The Centre was located at a mansion on the lake, Henri Dunant’s former home, and was a truly international organization, receiving support from private donations from several countries. Its small staff of about twenty (most of them young) came from all over the world. The director and chief negotiator, Martin Griffiths, was a former foreign service officer in the United Kingdom who had worked with the UN in Africa and elsewhere. Griffiths had a wealth of experience in peacekeeping and diplomatic missions. His deputy, a Canadian named Andrew Marshall, had long experience working with NGOs and the UN in third world nations. Both of these men impressed Zinni.

The HDC had brought in other experts in conflict resolution and negotiation as well, but they had also come up with a really innovative idea: They brought in “civil society” to “speak for the people.”

At this point, the government said, “Wait a minute, we speak for the people.”

And the GAM said, “No way. We speak for the people.”

But the HDC said, “Why not let the people speak for themselves?”

And so they communicated with village leaders, civic leaders, and other prominent people in the community to get their views. What the “people” had to say often shocked everybody. They had a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude: The sentiment often was that neither the government nor GAM had done right by them. This strong sentiment eventually helped bring about an agreement.

When Zinni arrived in Geneva, he learned that the negotiations had proved difficult so far, with both sides feeling that they were expected to give up more than they were getting.

For the government representatives — moderates — it was an extremely high-risk situation. If the special autonomy status they were offering Aceh worked, fine. But if it didn’t, or if the negotiations failed, or if the special autonomy offer set a precedent and other provinces demanded a similar status, they knew they had dug themselves into a deep and escape-proof hole.

For the GAM, who had been fighting for independence for decades, special autonomy presented them with a serious crisis. Accepting it meant abandoning their struggle for full independence.

Divided views on these issues within the government and GAM further complicated the negotiations.

Despite the problems and obstacles, Zinni came away from this first meeting greatly encouraged. “This thing can work,” he said to himself. “Both sides are sincerely committed to finding a peaceful solution, and the first-rate HDC staff is dogged in its determination to bring that about.”

He was ready to plunge back in — when he got another call that changed his life. For the moment, Aceh would have to be put on the back burner… though he would return to it later.

THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS

The call came from Assistant Secretary of State Bill Burns, a friend from Zinni’s time at CENTCOM, a few weeks after he returned from Geneva. “Could you meet me for lunch to discuss a project that’s brewing?” Burns asked. Zinni’s answer, of course, was yes.

Tom Clancy: Tony Zinni takes the story the rest of the way.

Burns, an Arabic speaker and Middle East expert, was head of the Near East Affairs Bureau at State. When I was at CENTCOM, he had been U.S. ambassador to Jordan — and one of our finest ambassadors in the region (greatly trusted by King Hussein and later by King Abdullah).

We lunched on August 27, 2001, at a Washington restaurant. There, my friend dropped a bomb: The Bush administration was about to sail against the conventional wisdom and seriously attempt to reengage in the Middle East peace process.

According to that wisdom, the Bush White House wanted to distance themselves from the Mideast snakepit. In 2000, the Clinton administration had failed to bring negotiations at Camp David between Yasser Arafat (the Palestinian leader) and Ehud Barak (the Israeli Prime Minister) to a successful conclusion. They had no desire to repeat that failure… or to suffer the resulting disastrous political fallout.

After the Camp David meetings broke down, the situation in the Mideast crashed. Barak lost his job and was replaced by Ariel Sharon; and Clinton failed to get the process back on track during the last days of his presidency. In September 2000, the Second Intifada reignited the cycles of violence that had plagued the region before the series of talks begun in the late ’90s had raised expectations.

As Burns and I continued our conversation, I came to understand that the President’s position had not in fact greatly changed; he was still understandably cautious. The inspiration for this new initiative, I gathered, was coming from Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, who clearly saw that it was critical for the United States to reengage. He was supported in this initiative by a core of senior people, like Bill Burns, at the State Department.

The Secretary had taken his concerns to the President, who had approved cautious and tentative moves at a very low level. (We were then only a few days from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which would change everything.)

In the recent past, the American approach had been to send high-visibility special envoys to mediate between the Israelis and Palestinians, with attendant media attention and inflated expectations. After the collapse of the Clinton-sponsored peace talks, former Senator George Mitchell had traveled to Israel with a political plan, and CIA Director George Tenet had followed with a security plan.