BUILDING PEACE IN THE BALKANS : For Some GIs, Bosnia Is Just a New Set of Civilian Problems

Michael Marquette was trudging through the Wisconsin snow at the end of December in his first campaign for political office when the mobilization order came: He was to prepare to head for Bosnia as a civil affairs officer with the U.S. Army.

The 35-year-old Marquette’s name will remain on the ballot for the March 19 election for seats on the Green Bay City Council and the Brown County Board of Supervisors. But he has had to advise voters against voting for him. He’ll be gone too long to serve a full term.

Though more dramatic than most, Marquette’s story reflects the realities of the makeup of one of the least-known sides of the American military: the civil affairs teams that are part of any major Army mission overseas.

Almost all civil affairs soldiers are reservists, and many are well-educated professionals or executives who find themselves making sudden transitions from white-collar careers and professional lives to challenges and uncertainties of a much grittier kind.

Civil affairs teams are called to active duty whenever the Army sets off on a mission such as the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf War, the relief operation for Kurds in northern Iraq, the aid work for Rwandan refugees in neighboring countries, the intervention in Haiti and now the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led enforcement of peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

So far, the Army has mobilized 287 civil affairs reservists for Bosnia and plans to call up 32 more by the end of the month.

“While we are looked on as a Peace Corps-type operation,” said Maj. Keith A. Haas, a civil affairs officer on active duty at Ft. Bragg, “we are not the Peace Corps.”

The teams are supposed to serve much like military diplomats who deal with local civilians, helping to head off and finesse conflicts with the troops that could cause serious problems. The job description leaves details vague.

“Civil affairs can be almost anything,” said 48-year-old Sgt. 1st Class Steven Dutch, who left his job as chairman of the natural and applied sciences department of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay to report for training here. “That’s what makes it so hard.”

Perhaps a battalion has taken over a school building to use as a headquarters. But UNICEF wants to resume classes for local children. A civil affairs officer figures out how to get the commanding officer to move.

“We are facilitators,” said Col. Michael E. Hess of New York, a 46-year-old “relationship manager” who helps smooth transactions for European clients at Citibank. The civil affairs work takes the same kind of skills he uses in his business life, he said.

Some previous operations--such as the one in northern Iraq--required civil affairs soldiers to work directly on humanitarian relief.

After the Gulf War ended in 1991 with the defeat of Iraq, the United States and its allies intervened in the region again--this time to protect the Kurdish population from repression by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Civil affairs reservists waiting in Saudi Arabia to return home were diverted to northern Iraq for the mission known as “Provide Comfort.”

Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Poh, 35, of Crivitz, Wis.--who usually builds custom log houses in the Wisconsin woods as second homes for city dwellers--helped supervise the construction of two refugee camps for the Kurds. Sgt. Maj. Albert Jenkins, 45, who heads the postal service police in Newark, N.J., helped set up a food distribution warehouse in Zakhu, Iraq, near the Turkish border.

The civil affairs reservists said working with Kurdish refugees reinforced the value of their work.

“Provide Comfort,” Hess said, “was the most gratifying experience of my life.”

A similar humanitarian role is not likely for the civil affairs officers in Bosnia because U.N. and private relief organizations have been at work there since the war began nearly four years ago. At most, the soldiers may end up arranging military support for the relief workers.

Indeed, most of the civil affairs officers preparing to leave Ft. Bragg won’t find out what is in store for them until they get to Bosnia.

They also can’t be sure what will await them when they return home.

Although federal law guarantees that reservists will not lose their civilian jobs, the call-up can still sidetrack careers.

Capt. James O’Neil, a 33-year-old lawyer, set up a private practice in Green Bay several years ago but had to close it down in December when his notice came.

“Jim O’Neil, as an attorney and law firm, no longer exists, unfortunately,” he said. “When I return, I will have to start over--hang out the shingle again.”

Sgt. Scott Argetsinger, 27, was called up after completing two-thirds of his course at the Kansas City Police Academy. He will have to start the course over when he returns.

“My call-up was inconveniently timed,” he said. “But the Army paid for all my college. I owe them something. I guess it sounds like a cliche, but it’s also the chance of a lifetime.”

After working for the Army and an audiovisual company, 39-year-old Maj. Pamela Brady of Long Island, N.Y., decided to seek a new career in health and enrolled in the fall as an occupational therapy student at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. She managed to complete one semester before returning to active military service.

“It’s more or less put my life on hold for a year,” Brady said.

All the reservists have had extensive military training, and many were once on active duty in the Army. The courses at Ft. Bragg amount to a round of final preparations.

The crowded schedule has included courses on removing land mines, cold weather training, map reading and Bosnia studies. The Army also has supplied the civil affairs reservists with Serbo-Croatian language tapes, but most say the language is too tough for them to master, and almost all agree that they will depend on interpreters while in Bosnia.

Marquette, the frustrated candidate, may harbor a lingering hope that voters will elect him in absentia. He said he does not want to win that way but acknowledged that if he did, “It would be overwhelming.”