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

Copyright

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000

Copyright © Milos Stankovic 2000

Maps by Jillian Luff

Milos Stankovic, Foreword by Martin Bell, M.P. asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Praise

Further reviews for Trusted Mole:

‘By far the best book to have come out of the Balkan wars, not because it explains the conflict simply, but because Stankovic demonstrates with wit and eloquence that simplicity was never part of the equation … This is not, however, a bleak book. Far from it. There is humour, lots of it, often (inevitably) black, but also reflecting the accidental idiocies and genuinely comic scenes that occurred in the midst of organised chaos.’

PETER MILLAR, Sunday Times

‘Stankovic’s book is far more than the outcry of an innocent man foully accused. He has a wonderful eye for detail and a natural storyteller’s gift, and passion, to get across the bizarre and terrible cruelty of what the people of Bosnia went through. At times, I laughed out loud; at times, horrible moments of my spells there came swimming back, brilliantly evoked in Stankovic’s fresh prose … Trusted Mole is rich in comic scenes … But the comedy switchbacks with the tragedy … this man was a hero, caught in the middle and discarded by a military bureaucracy that should be shot at dawn for its betrayal.’

JOHN SWEENEY, Observer

‘Now exculpated from all charges, Stankovic has written a remarkably frank account of his time in Bosnia … What Trusted Mole makes sickeningly clear is not just the absurdity of sending in peacekeepers with no peace to keep (and neither the weaponry nor the political backing to impose it), but also the corrupting effects of war and humanitarian aid on almost everybody involved.’

MARK ALMOND, Literary Review

‘This is a powerful book … the inside story, not only of the UN’s war in Bosnia … but also, of what happens to someone who spends too long in a place populated by the dead and those whose hope has died.’

CHARLOTTE EAGER, Sunday Telegraph

‘Well-written, gripping and highly informative … It is evident that he was disgracefully let down by a system which he trusted … and he is to be congratulated for writing a fascinating account of an experience that would leave most people shattered.’

ADRIAN WEALE, Daily Mail

‘Fascinating and truly exciting … As a window into that hidden period, his account is a revelation, Uttered with insights into the ordinary human chaos which lay behind the apparently calm and collected statements of the politicians and the military top brass.’

JAMES RUDDY, Eastern Daily Press

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of two people. First, it is for my father, who led a full, varied and productive life. Second, it is for Dobrila Kalaba and countless others like her who were denied the realisation of those basic aspirations by the horror that was Bosnia.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Foreword by Martin Bell OBE, MP

‘Mother Bosnia’

PART ONE 1992–1993

Baby Blue

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

PART TWO 1994–1995

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

PART THREE

Reflections

CHARTER FOR PEACE

AMERICAN FOOTBALL

Glossary

Index

Author’s Note

About the Author

About the Publisher

Foreword

BY MARTIN BELL OBE, MP

In January 1993 in Central Bosnia I met a British officer who was introduced to me as Captain Mike Stanley of the Parachute Regiment. There was something quietly out of the ordinary about him. He was not in the usual Sandhurst mould. He was reserved, self-contained, intense and fiercely loyal to the cause he was serving, which was to save as many lives as possible under the inadequate mandate of the UN peacekeeping force. He was at that time the interpreter and adviser to Brigadier Andrew Cumming, the first commander of British Forces in Bosnia. He went on to work for Lieutenant Colonel Bob Stewart of the Cheshire Regiment, Brigadier Robin Searby and Generals Rose and Smith, the British commanders of UNPROFOR in Sarajevo. He served longer in the Bosnian war than any other British soldier.

His real name was Milos Stankovic. His father was a Serb and his mother was partly Serb and partly Scottish. Both had served the Allied cause in Yugoslavia in the Second World War, and had been lucky to escape to England with their lives. Their son, a British citizen, chose a military career. He was accepted by the Parachute Regiment, and served in Northern Ireland, Mozambique and the Gulf. When the Bosnian war broke out he was one of only three soldiers in the British Army who spoke the language fluently. It seemed an advantage at the time – or at least an advantage to everyone but himself.

His value to successive British commanders was that he could translate the people as well as the language. Tito’s illusion of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ fractured into barbarism, and competing warlords dragged their peoples into an abyss of psychotic savagery and primeval horror. These leaders were as indifferent to suffering on their own side as on the others’. Betrayal, mendacity and manipulation were their common currency. At prisoner exchanges they traded in bodies both dead and alive – and the dead, it seemed, mattered more to them than the living. Stankovic called this necrowar. He did not share their values but he understood their mentality. The Balkan warlords on one side and the International Community on the other glared at each other with incomprehension across a great divide. The captain from the Parachute Regiment could make sense of each to the other across that barrier.

He also saved lives. He rescued a wounded Muslim woman under fire in Vitez. With another British officer of similar background, known to us as Captain Nick Costello, and with the approval of the UN Commander, he smuggled scores of people out of the besieged city of Sarajevo – Muslims, Croats and Serbs alike – to join their families abroad. He helped to unblock UN convoys and to negotiate cease-fires. His mission was to win the trust of the Serbs, and he did so. They knew of his origins, but they also knew that he was not ‘one of them’. ‘Captain Stanley is a nice enough guy,’ the Bosnian Serb Vice-President Nikola Koljevic was quoted as saying to a colleague, ‘but you must always remember that his loyalty is to his Queen and his Commanders.’

He served with honour and distinction and received the MBE from the hand of the Queen. He was the outstanding liaison officer of his time. He did for Britain in the 1990s what Fitzroy MacLean had done in the 1940s, and in the same turbulent corner of Europe. Whenever Milos Stankovic crossed over into Bosnian Serb territory he described it as going to the ‘Dark Side’.

In April 1995, after serving in Bosnia for the greater part of two years, he returned from that theatre of operations and resumed his military career. By this stage he had been promoted to major while in Bosnia. He served as a company commander with the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and was accepted into the Joint Services Staff College at Bracknell.

It was there on 16 October 1997, two and a half years after leaving Bosnia, that he was arrested by the Ministry of Defence Police under the Official Secrets Act, on suspicion of having spied for the Bosnian Serbs. Neither the origin nor the precise nature of the allegations was ever made clear.

By that time I had embarked on a new career as a Member of Parliament. He would not have been allowed to speak to me had I still been a journalist, but as an MP I could contact him. I offered to help because I knew the man and was convinced of his innocence. I also knew he was totally alone. There is no lonelier soul on the planet than a British soldier arrested under the Official Secrets Act. The Army at that stage had not even provided a ‘soldier’s friend’, the basic right of any soldier facing a serious charge.

His treatment at the hands of the MoD Police is a story in its own right. He was extraordinarily well served both by his lawyer, Steve Barker, and by his ‘soldier’s friend’, Brigadier Andrew Cumming, who was eventually appointed, as Milos Stankovic’s choice, into that role. All I will say at this point is that the conduct of the inquiry was hostile and prejudicial, and should be used in our police academies for years to come as the textbook case of how not to conduct an investigation.

One of the many injustices of the police inquiry, in which an innocent man’s rights were flagrantly violated, was the sheer inordinate length of it. Stankovic was thirty-four when it started, and thirty-six when the papers were finally passed to the Crown Prosecution Service. One advantage of this, however, was that it gave him the time to reflect on his years as a soldier of peace in Bosnia and to set down his account of them.

That account is what follows. It is the best book yet written on the Bosnian war, certainly including my own. It is more than that. It is the most extraordinary soldier’s story that I have ever read.

Mother Bosnia

Independence, the dream of man.

Independence, the goal of nations.

Why for Bosnia is this a contradiction?

Mother to three major creeds,

Whose devotees fight for spoils

In each other’s gardens.

Horrified is the gaze of the world

While Mother Bosnia tears herself apart.

Offspring, brothers and sisters

Are set along the route to destruction

Deaf to Reason, blind to facts.

Mother Bosnia – a cradle of riches

Now becomes the spring of discord,

History repeating itself

Maiming, killing, displacing,

Robbing of land, the rule of the gun.

Seeds of a future conflict are sown,

Mother Bosnia is torn apart

The atomic age is with us,

But Bosnia is just another name for Lepanto:

Creeds disunited and waging war.

I often wonder how God must feel

When three sons with different flags

Crave for his attention:

‘In your name I kill,

Thy will be done.’

How? By killing the other son?

Mother Bosnia is bleeding

No quarter is given.

Hate is a chameleon of chauvinistic meanings,

And the World at large watches on TV

With an attitude of:

Provided it is you and not me

You can have my sympathy.

And so, Bosnians are

The perpetrators and the victims.

While the World watches on

Mother Bosnia is torn apart.

Bernardo Stella, London 1994

PART ONE

1992–1993

Baby Blue

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last

But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun

Crying like a fire in the sun

Look out, baby, the saints are comin’ through

And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.

‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’, Bob Dylan, 1966.

ONE Operation Bretton

Thursday 16 October 1997 – Joint Services Command and Staff College, Bracknell, UK

‘Are you Major Stankovic?’ I catch the flash of a silver warrant badge encased in black leather and glimpse a pair of shiny handcuffs in one of the open brief-cases on the table. I nod – what the hell’s going on here?

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector —, Ministry of Defence Police. I have a warrant for your arrest under Section 2.2b of the 1989 Official Secrets Act …’ he’s reading from the warrant, ‘… on suspicion of maintaining contact with the Bosnian Serb leadership, of passing information which might endanger the lives of British soldiers in Bosnia, of embarrassing the British government and the United Nations …’

My stomach lurches. Instinctively I cross my arms.

‘… You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will be used in evidence against you. Do you understand?’

My mind is racing – say nothing. ‘Mmm’ is my only response.

The day had started normally enough. I’d spent the previous night at home in Farnham reading up on various articles and reports in preparation for the following morning’s syndicate room discussion on getting women into front-line units. Normal Staff College stuff.

The alarm wakes me at seven – quick shave, throw on the leathers, twenty minutes threading my way through solid early morning traffic on the M3. My thoughts are given up to taking a radical line – get ’em into the Paras and Marines first. I leave the Suzuki in the car park, dump the leathers in my room, climb into Barrack Dress – brown shoes, green plastic trousers, shirt, green woollen jersey – don’t forget the wretched name-tag, they’re so anal about them here. I wander over to the syndicate room and leave my bag. Still ten minutes to go. Time for a quick coffee and a smoke.

It’s 0820. I’m standing outside the Purple Hall smoking a cigarette and chatting to James Stewart – something about women sticking bayonets into people and could they do it. Brigadier Reddy Watt walks past. He catches my eye and gives me a funny look. I carry on chatting to James for another couple of minutes. The Brigadier is back again.

‘Milos, could I have a quiet word with you?’ Nothing unusual in that. Probably something to do with last Friday’s syndicate room discussion which he’d sat in on.

‘Sure, Brigadier.’ I put out my cigarette and follow him in silence. It’s slightly uncomfortable and I’m wondering why he’s saying nothing. We round the corner of one of the large unused prefabricated lecture halls. He opens the door and motions me inside. The lights are on. The place is almost empty, but not quite – two men in dark suits on the left, brief-cases open on a desk. At the far end of the hall two more men in dark suits, also with open brief-cases on a desk. They’re chatting quietly. I take a couple of paces forward and turn to the Brigadier to say, ‘We can’t talk in here. There are people here.’ But I don’t – his right hand is stretched out, palm open. There’s a strange expression in his eyes, almost apologetic.

I walk towards the two at the far end. They’re watching me now. The one on the left is short and tubby with a pot belly hanging over his belt. The one on the right is slightly taller but not much. He is also slightly portly but not as flabby. Both men are wearing cheap, dark blue off-the-peg C&A-type suits. There’s a puffed up, officious air about the pair of them. As I approach the one on the right produces a warrant badge. Pot Belly does the same. The first one then starts reading from a piece of paper. Time stops dead.

The Taller One produces a warrant for the search of my house with authorisation to seize just about anything they want. It’s signed off at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court. I’m forced to hand over my house keys, car keys and motorbike keys. I sign some bit of paper to that effect.

‘You’ll now be taken to your room where you’ll be able to change. We want to minimise any embarrassment.’ That’s kind of you! I’m not really interested in them. Spying for the Bosnian Serbs! Where has this come from? I feel faint.

I change quickly – trousers, shoes, shirt, tie and blazer, all a bit grubby but so what. Pot Belly and The Taller One are in there with me. I’m told not to touch anything. They’re talking into their Cell phones,‘… is the car ready yet? … no! … ten minutes! … yes, that’s right, side entrance …’

There’s time to kill. They’re not ready for whatever’s coming next. I sit on the bed and smoke a couple of cigarettes.

The Taller One turns to Pot Belly. ‘What did the suspect say when he was arrested?’

Pot Belly checks his notes. ‘He said quote “Mm” unquote.’

‘Is that with two Ms or three?’ his companion asks.

Pot Belly looks confused.

I rescue them. ‘It’s three “Ms”.’ Jesus! These boys really are Keystone Cops. And they’re flapping too, nervous almost. Curious.

Eventually they’re ready. I’m bundled into the back of an unmarked car along with The Taller One. There’s a woman driving. Pot Belly follows in another car. Apparently we’re off to Guildford Police Station – quite what for I still don’t know.

The Taller One asks what my neighbours are like and whether they’re likely to cause trouble. I tell him that they’ll all be at work. He continues asking questions about the house almost bashfully.

‘Is there anything we need to know about your house before we enter?’

‘Like what? What do you mean?’ Now he’s got me baffled.

He says almost shyly, ‘Well you know … some people leave things in their homes, when they’re out …’

‘What sort of things?’ Now I’m interested.

‘Well … unexpected things …’

‘Unexpected things?’

‘You know … booby traps and things like that,’ he says quickly. Booby traps! Does he really think I’ve dug a bear pit in my mid-terrace two-up two-down?

‘No, no, don’t worry. Just turn the key. You’ll be fine,’ I reassure him.

With nothing else to talk about he tries to engage me in idle conversation, ‘So, you’re a biker then. What type do you ride?’

‘Suzuki … eleven hundred,’ I reply automatically.

‘Eleven hundred, eh. What’s the servicing interval then?’ I’m stunned. I can’t believe this is happening. Motorbikes! Servicing intervals … who gives a shit! Here am I arrested for spying and this clown wants to know about servicing intervals.

I make a huge effort, ‘… er … every six thousand miles …’ He nods knowledgeably and the stupid conversation continues. He’s got an accent, West Country or something. I ask him.

‘Devon actually.’

‘Oh, right.’ What next?

‘Have you come far?’ Now I’m doing it, asking stupid questions, ‘Do you come here often?’

‘From Braintree, in Essex. Early start this morning. We were up at five.’ Poor thing! Must have been terrible for you. It’s the early copper who catches a spy. Braintree? Essex? What the hell happens there? And, anyway, who are these people? The only MoD Police I’ve ever seen are those rude, unfriendly uniformed knobs who lurk at the main gates of MoD establishments. Those buggers at Shrivenham are particularly odious – gits without a civil word in their heads.

On the outskirts of Guildford the inane conversation stops. The Taller One’s voice changes, goes up by perhaps half an octave, quicker too. ‘Right, when we get to the police station this is what will happen …’ He quickly outlines a sequence of events adding almost breathlessly,‘… I don’t want to make a mistake at this stage!’ I don’t want to make a mistake at this stage!? You’re flapping. For the first time I realise he’s nervous. You’ve just made your first mistake … never reveal a weakness.

The car swings right through a rear entrance followed by Pot Belly. We’re out of the cars. Flanked by both suits I’m marched into a dark entrance leading to a custody suite with a long, raised counter. There’s an unshaven scruffy drunk slumped against one end of the counter. There’s a large desk sergeant and a young PC behind the counter. The Taller One approaches the PC who is partially hidden behind a computer screen. He produces him his warrant card and explains who he is. The PC looks a bit bewildered. The civilian police don’t know anything about this. They’re not expecting us.

The Taller One starts to read out the arrest warrant. The PC taps furiously on his keyboard – ‘Hold on. Slow down. I’ve got to type all this in.’ He slows down … Official Secrets Act … Bosnian Serbs … passing information … endangering lives … blah, blah, blah … The PC glances at me. His eyes are popping out of his head. Even the drunk perks up.

I’m told to empty my pockets of everything. Wallet is emptied, coins, an old train ticket, Zippo lighter, twenty B&H – ten left. Everything is itemised and recorded in triplicate by the sergeant. My meagre bits and pieces are stuffed into plastic bags.

‘Please remove your belt and tie.’ I do as I’m asked. I can’t believe this is happening!

‘Do you want my watch?’

‘No. You can keep that and your cigarettes. Not the lighter. You’ll have to buzz if you want a light.’ What the hell do they think I’m going to do? Set fire to myself with a Zippo!

‘Have you ever been arrested before?’ asks the PC, eyes still popping. What do you think?

‘No. Never.’

‘Didn’t think so somehow.’ He casts an eye over my blazer with its brass buttons of the Parachute Regiment.

All puffed up, The Taller One pipes up, ‘We don’t want him to make any phone calls at this stage … because of the seriousness of the arrest … not until we’ve searched his house …’ What! What does this asshole think I’m going to do? Pick up the phone to some fictitious contact and say ‘The violets are red’! They really do think I’m a spy.

The PC looks uneasy. ‘No phone call?’

The Taller One nods, ‘… because of the serious nature of the arrest …’ Oh, you’re so bloody sure of yourself aren’t you!