Captains Courageous Enough Not to Fight

In a smoke-choked room, the Bosnian Serb officer laid bare his concern: When his soldiers withdrew, would the U.S. Army guarantee the safety of Serbian civilians?

“Of course, my Bradleys [armored vehicles] will be sitting right there,” replied Capt. Mike Kasales, a troop commander with the 1st Cavalry, considered one of the Army’s toughest units.

The answer was honorable but wrong. Another Army captain seated at the table quickly interrupted, “Mike, we can’t really make promises.”

Kasales is part of the dicey new world of peacekeeping in the Balkans, where a delicate mission is being played out even as each side is still discovering the rules.

With international forces--including 20,000 Americans--flowing into Bosnia, officers such as Kasales, often the first U.S. soldiers into an area, have quickly become mini-ambassadors, quick-study diplomats who are playing a key role in determining the success of the peacekeeping effort.

This, the experts say, is not a generals’ war. It is a campaign for captains like Kasales, a Californian, and James “J. J.” Love of Michigan.

They not only must command their own forces but must explain the Dayton, Ohio, peace treaty to townsfolk and opposing armies.

They must negotiate real estate deals to set up command posts for their own troops and coordinate once-warring factions in the hazardous task of removing thousands of deadly land mines.

They must have the tact to soothe an irritated farmer when an armored vehicle slides off the road and knocks over a telephone pole. They also must have the verve to graciously eat cooked pig’s brains offered by a well-intentioned host.

For the youthful commanders, “It’s like a cavalry mission from the 1800s, and they’re taming the Wild, Wild West,” said Capt. Bob Rector of the Army’s civil affairs division. “They probably will never have another job like this.”

While captains have always played an important role in American peacekeeping missions around the globe, in Bosnia they have become even more vital, because U.S. forces have fanned out across a country where a harsh winter readily shuts down roads and telephone lines. The Balkan peacekeeping mission is far more decentralized than, for instance, similar efforts in Haiti and Somalia, where the reins of command were held more tightly, military officials say.

“We set the table. It’s the captains who sit down and get people to eat,” said Lt. Col. Greg Stone, who supervises Kasales and other American troops in the critical, potentially explosive region known as the Posavina Corridor. “They are the players.”

Kasales, Love and other American peacekeepers trained for their current roles at U.S. bases in Germany, where they played out various scenarios, such as monitoring prisoner releases. It is because of the Army’s confidence in these officers, as well as a growing recognition that a more decentralized command affords the Army greater flexibility, that these captains wield such influence.

Kasales and Love, foot soldiers in this new Army endeavor, are both all of 30 years old. Each is learning on the job. Spending time with them offers an understanding of the intense pressures on America’s newest peacekeeping mission.

The sensitive, intricate maneuvers they must pull off show just how big and complicated will be the international force’s task of bringing a lasting peace to this region, where more than 250,000 people have been killed and more than 3 million Muslims, Croats and Serbs have been made refugees since 1991, when war broke out.

Mike Kasales: Riding the Wave

Kasales, who has been in the Army for nine years, knows about combat. He served in the Persian Gulf, where, he notes, the rules boiled down to one thing: Destroy the enemy. Now, though, he labors under a more difficult standard: He must remain fair and impartial as he puts himself and his men in the narrow space between longtime foes whose names he cannot pronounce and tries to ensure that they don’t fire at one another.

“In this situation, there is no defined enemy,” the stocky, blue-eyed former college wrestler and football player said as he paused to squirt tobacco juice on the ground. “I can’t point at anybody and say, ‘That is the bad guy.’ This is more difficult and more challenging. This is more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.”

On the surface, Kasales hardly seems patient enough for such a task. The Mountain View soldier commands the 1st Cavalry’s B, or “Bandit,” Troop, which has a saying: “Americans by birth. Bandits by God. Tankers by choice.”

Kasales is, colleagues say, a tank warrior. He has no ear for niceties or finesse. If he believes it is in his troops’ interest, he will disagree with higher-ranking officers--and take a tongue-lashing for it.

He doesn’t follow the book. He doesn’t, for instance, always wear a helmet, or “brain bucket,” as required. He explains this omission by pointing out that Bosnian government and Serbian officers here don’t wear protective gear and that he wants to put them at ease.

Little things count a lot here, he has found. Even smiles and waves are strategic.

“Wave, right,” Kasales ordered on a recent day as he directed his Humvee driver and an artillery officer to wave to some school-age children on the right side of the road.

“Wave, left,” he said only three minutes later, as the Humvee passed a farmer on the left.

“Big wave, right,” he said, as a busload of Serbian soldiers approached.

“A smile and wave is our best weapon,” Kasales explained.

Before setting up a base for his soldiers, Kasales recently led a convoy into Gradacac, a predominantly Muslim city that was a frequent target of Serbs. They pounded it with artillery, killing an estimated 1,000 people and wounding 1,500 in skirmishes that, at their peak, included 7,000 shells raining on Gradacac in a single day.

En route to meet the city’s Muslim mayor, Kasales made an impromptu stop at the headquarters of the Serbian forces, who had shelled Gradacac as recently as two days before the signing of the Dayton accord.

Over small cups of Turkish coffee, the American officers learned of the Serbs’ concern--that Serbian civilians would be vulnerable to attacks once the Serbian soldiers withdrew. Initially, Kasales, with his cavalry instincts, could not resist: He gave his assurances that no harm would come as long as his tanks were there.

But as he quickly realized, he could not make a promise to one side and not the other; he could not pledge to provide for anyone’s safety. And when it came right down to it, he could guarantee nothing, except that he would do his best to be evenhanded in “this peace thing,” which means separating warring factions.

Kasales arrived an hour late at the Muslim mayor’s office. Though officials were upset, they forgave his tardiness. The roads, after all, were bad. They did not know he had been chatting with the Serbian soldiers they still considered their enemies.

Kasales spelled out his needs: facilities for troops, preferably buildings with plenty of surrounding asphalt; electricity; running water; telephone lines. After moving in, the Americans wanted access to items such as laundry service and fresh-baked bread.

The mayor listened patiently to the young American almost half his age. In his bombed-out city, where the population has dropped from 56,000 to 34,000, most residents aren’t even close to having the goods and services that the U.S. Army captain had requested. Children attend schools with no windows. The hospital is run with a skeleton crew. On a good day, only 72 telephone calls can be made at any one time. Gradacac is in ruins.

Yet the mayor assured Kasales: We will do all that we can. We want to cooperate.

Kasales left feeling optimistic.

“I’m everybody’s friend, but I’m not anybody’s buddy,” he said. “I’ll never win a Nobel Peace Prize, but maybe I’ll win the Junior Nobel Peace Prize.”

But days later, he was less sure. Asked to coordinate the clearing of some land mines by both Serbian and Bosnian government soldiers, Kasales was mired in new problems. The first day, the government troops refused to clear an area, as they had agreed. The Serbs also balked, claiming they wanted protective helmets and flak vests--gear they insisted the Americans had promised. Each side claimed it would not clear mines the other had planted.

Milosav Stjepanovic, a Serbian major, tried to explain his side’s view, telling Kasales a parable: If there are two bank tellers and $1,000 is missing, would it be fair for both men to pay $500? Clearly, the thief would profit $500 and the honest man would be penalized $500, the Serb argued.

A day lost in argument. And on the second day, both were balking again. The Serbs claimed they lacked the fuel to drive to the area where they were to clear mines; the government troops wouldn’t work if the Serbs wouldn’t.

But this day, Kasales decided to get tough. After all, he recalled, he was in his lucky underwear--kite-adorned boxers his mother gave him.

You won’t clear mines? he asked the two sides. Then we won’t staff checkpoints you want. No fuel to drive to the mined area? he asked the Serbs. He calculated aloud how long it would take them to walk to the mined area; he said he would delay their mission until the Serbs could get there--on foot.

The Serbian major laughed. No, the Serbs would drive. The mine-clearing began that day.

“Never did I think we’d be doing something like this, but the Army is moving in this direction,” Kasales said. “We don’t need shoot-’em-up John Waynes in the Army, because that’s not what it’s all about anymore.”

Capt. James Love: Amiable Under Fire

The military labors here are nothing less than fascinating to Love, commander of C, or “Comanche,” Troop. Though many soldiers have grumbled about being overseas, away from their families, in a cold, strange land, Love couldn’t be happier. To him, every day brings a different adventure, a different set of challenges.

With disheveled, dark blond hair and slightly protruding ears, Love looks like an adult Dennis the Menace. He is easygoing and readily makes fun of himself. There was, for instance, the time he fell into a water-filled trench. Or when he tripped, opening up a gash below his lip that required two stitches.

But for all his personal clumsiness, Love, who joined the Army nine years ago, has maneuvered deftly among the Serbs and Croats. Now, if he cannot attend a meeting between them, officers from each side ask, “Where is Capt. Love?”

He won such appreciation the hard way.

When, for example, it was time to ensure that local forces had pulled back the distance from each other necessary to create a “separation zone,” as required by the Dayton accord, Love decided to walk what had been the front lines of numerous battles in recent years.

Just days before he took his trek, Croatian snipers had fired on Serbian soldiers. For Love, this was an important time to highlight the American presence in Bosnia. He also wanted the Serbs to know that he intended to personally inspect the demilitarized zone.

Love set off on foot, escorted by a translator, four unarmed Serbian soldiers and 12 of his own men, all carrying weapons. The group began in the bombed, deserted town of Lijeskovac, where only days before he had supervised a mine-clearing effort by Croats and Serbs.

But as Love started down a path, the Serbian soldiers waved him over to another route, shouting, “Min-as! Min-as!”

Love looked exasperated.

“This is a problem,” he grumbled. “They said they marked all the minefields, and we start walking and they say: Mines!”

Love and his entourage let the Serbian soldiers lead the way on a winding path past combat emplacements. At the third bunker--a squat primitive shelter dug into the ground, with dirt-packed logs as a roof--an American soldier noticed another path leading in the direction of Croatian territory.

When Love asked the Serbian soldiers about the second path, they explained it connected to the front line, the real one.

The American soldiers were peeved.

“I thought we were on the front line,” one said.

“These guys tell you nothing unless you spot it yourself,” another groused.

Here, along the real front line, the waist-deep trenches--all dug without benefit of machinery--were flooded.

A primitive, 3-foot-tall barrier of wispy branches woven together and filled with dirt ran parallel to the trenches. It could, Love figured, probably stop bullets shot from a distance.

“I swear to God, it’s like touring a Civil War battlefield,” he muttered. “It’s a hell of a way to fight a war.”

Using satellite tracking devices to pinpoint their exact location, the Americans logged each primitive structure. Love was not pleased by what he saw. The Serbs had said the bunkers were destroyed, and yet only one looked disassembled.

But Love recognized that, in the business of keeping peace, all sides--the Americans included--sometimes say things simply for effect. For instance, minutes after Love asked the Croats to curb their normal celebratory firing of guns during the Christmas holiday, several Army Cobra helicopters happened to fly overhead. Was that, one Croatian soldier asked, in response to us? Love nodded. The Croats agreed to stop their fire.

At times, Love has found himself surprised by the pitch of the emotions he has encountered, stuff he could not begin to anticipate. Just before a meeting with a Serbian officer, Love’s translator, Nenad Tomasevic, 24, a Croat, turned to the American captain and announced, “I am not afraid to die!”

Love was astounded.

“You are not going to die. You are not going to be hurt,” he told Tomasevic, who bears a long scar circling his cheeks and chin. The Croat later explained that he lost two fingers of his left hand in a battle with the Serbian soldiers for whom Love had asked him to translate; he was disfigured in that same battle by a tank blast that almost tore his face off.

For Love, each day has brought a blizzard of new questions and issues.

One Serbian soldier approached him and said he wanted to see relatives who lived in a nearby Croatian town.

“Can I go?” the soldier asked.

Not in uniform, Love answered. Not with a weapon.

“If I get captured by the Croats, would you rescue me?” the young soldier asked.

That’s not a job for the U.S. Army, it would be the civil authorities’ duty, Love replied. The soldier looked crushed.

Only hours earlier, the soldier’s boss, Capt. Milan Josic, had pitched his own request. He lives in the demilitarized zone patrolled by the Americans, an area where local soldiers are not permitted to carry guns. After pointing out that his battalion had fulfilled all of Love’s requests, Josic wanted a favor.

“Can I get approval from you so that I can go home with a pistol?” he asked. “I’m responsible. I am not going to make a problem.”

Love politely but firmly declined.

To Love, peacekeeping means fielding a constant barrage of requests, sometimes reasonable, sometimes not. Suddenly he finds himself thinking about what is fair. Is he leaning toward one side? Has he shown any favoritism?

“The hardest part,” he said, “is trying to maintain this impartiality, this balance.”