The fight for independence had been led by the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, directed by its government in exile in Stockholm, Sweden. Now an agreement had been reached to conduct negotiations between them and the government, with the HDC as mediator.
The United States had taken a carefully moderate position in these negotiations. That is, it supported a resolution of the problem within the context of the state of Indonesia. In the U.S. view, the independence of Aceh had to be off the table. The U.S. was not going to support a breaking up of that nation. By the same token, they sent a strong message to the Jakarta government: “You’ve got to do better for the people of Aceh. They are in a special situation and deserve special treatment. You have to find a reasonable way to give them that.”
There were several compelling reasons for the American position; but the most compelling was practical: Indonesia is fragile. The U.S. didn’t want to see it fragment, and create a constellation of potentially nonviable states. God knows what could happen if these failed or incapable states started harboring extremist movements.
There was a second, no less practical reason: Independence movements provoked governments to take a hard-line approach, and this almost inevitably ended in bloodshed. If ways could be found to moderate demands for independence, while delivering many of the material benefits that independence promises, and if all this was coupled with moderation of the central government’s hard-line approach, then everybody got a win. But getting there involved a lot of ifs.
Zinni was not involved in developing the U.S. government position in the Aceh-Indonesia conflict, nor was it 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.
Tenet’s aim was to bring the security situation on the ground back to where it was in September 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The Israelis would pull out of the areas they had occupied since then, they would move checkpoints, and the Palestinian workers would come back into Israel. For their part, the Palestinians would crack down on extremists, make arrests, and confiscate weapons.
Once everything had been restored to the September 2000 position, the two parties could then move forward on Mitchell’s more political plan, which was designed to build confidence and move forward on political issues such as freezing the settlements the Israelis had been building on the West Bank and in Gaza. Eventually, they’d return to final status issues, like the status of Jerusalem, the right of return, the final status of the settlements . . . all of the issues on which President Clinton, Barak, and Arafat had locked horns at Camp David.
Both Israelis and Palestinians had “agreed” to these proposals “in principle,” but implementing them had gone nowhere. As I was to learn, you could paper the walls with agreements. Getting them implemented on the ground was another matter; both sides disregarded them.
This time the approach was going to be softer and less visible. There would be no special envoy. Ambassador Burns was going to quietly run the mediation mission out of his own shop. Since he had to run the whole region, not just this one process, he was looking for someone he knew and trusted, with knowledge, experience, stature, and solid personal relationships in the region, who would become his semiofficial assistant, working closely with him and filling in when he had to turn his attention elsewhere. This person would become a part-time right hand, who could take over and oversee the process when he was away.
The goal, Burns went on to explain, was to reengage without making a big deal of it. Everyone knew what needed to be done and where we needed to go; and the Mitchell and Tenet plans already went a long way toward spelling all this out (as did the various agreements, near agreements, and accords already reached in Madrid, Oslo, and elsewhere). There was no need to create another big plan or to launch another big effort. What needed to be done was already out there. It had to be won or lost on the ground.
Burns and Powell wanted a few people to go over there and work out with the two parties how to actually structure the existing agreements, and to find the best way to set these up and implement them. These people would start up the process, feel it out, and then oversee it.
What I think Burns had in mind for me was to start the initial movement; and then, as the process moved along, if a bigger player was needed in there to close deals or whatever, he would come and take the lead. When he was not able to be present, but they still needed somebody with clout who could ride herd on this thing, then I would fill in for him.
“Are you willing to take this on?” he asked.
How could I not be excited? This was a job worth doing. Even if nothing lasting came of it—which was all too likely.
“Great!” I told him. “I’m not real familiar with all the issues or many of the people involved in this thing; but I’d really love to get involved in it.”
“I’d love to see you involved,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do to make it happen.”
And he continued: “What I’m talking about is a kind of unusual setup here at State. We’ll have to figure out how we structure our arrangement.”
“Well, look,” I said, “I have some thoughts on that. First of all, I don’t want to be paid for this thing. That way I can keep some measure of independence. I want to be able to do what I have to do, say what I have to say, and not feel that somebody’s going to accuse me of doing this for gain.
“Second, I don’t want a title. I don’t want to be called envoy or anything else.
“Third, we ought to keep this low-key. There shouldn’t be a lot of publicity about me doing this. I’m just a part-time special assistant who happens to be there with you.
“Let’s absolutely do this thing. But let’s do it with no pay, no title, no press, no media attention, and no making a big deal of it.”
He agreed that was the best arrangement. “I’ll take these ideas to Secretary Powell and see what he says.”
“Great,” I said.
DAYS PASSED. I waited restlessly for Bill Burns’s call, which would take us to the next step. I was very eager to find out my actual function and the nature of my mission—all still unclear.
As I waited, I did my usual thing when I took on something new; I read everything about the Israeli-Palestinian problem that I could get my hands on.
During the same period, I worked with Bill Burns’s people to structure my official relationship with the State Department. The lawyers drew up a contract. It turned out that even a no-pay employee is still bound by conflict-of-interest and ethics rules, which rightfully limited other things I might have done.
I have to confess that my refusal to take pay did not totally spring from altruistic motives, such as my wish for independence, or from my hope to be a wonderful servant of the nation (though these motives were important). This job was going to be part-time; and I was involved in other work that brought in paychecks. If I accepted pay from State, I’d have to give up these other positions. The ethics and conflict-of-interest rules still prevented me from taking on certain jobs; and everything I did had to be vetted and cleared by the government and the State Department. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
TWO WEEKS after my initial meeting with Bill Burns, on September 11, 2001, the world changed drastically.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the Bush administration looked anew at reengagement in the peace process. Their approach changed, and expanded. According to Ambassador Burns, the rate of these changes was accelerating. He couldn’t be specific, but the nature of the peace initiative was no longer what we had discussed. I sensed that my own part in all this was also changing.
On the twenty-third of October, I attended a series of briefs at the State Department on the background of the peace process and an update on the current situation; and I was instructed to stay ready to travel quickly after the design of my mission was firmed up. How exactly it was going to be firmed up was still not clear to me.
On November 10, 2001, President Bush delivered a historic speech before the UN General Assembly in which he committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state—the first time a President of the United States had done that. The objective of the peace process, he told the delegates, is two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side. This was a very controversial and bold statement.
I was very impressed.
The reengagement effort we were about to start promised to be more momentous than I had first thought.
The President’s speech was to be followed by a major speech from Secretary Powell on the nineteenth at the University of Louisville that would add specifics to the President’s general principles.
Shortly before the Louisville event, Ambassador Burns called to tell me that Powell’s remarks would trigger our departure for Israel, though he couldn’t actually tell me what this meant for me and what we were going to do. . . . He was not keeping this from me; he truly didn’t know the answer. All he—or anybody—did know was that Powell’s speech would be the defining moment; yet right up to the eleventh hour, nobody was sure what the moment would define.
The day before the speech, Burns faxed me a rough copy of the speech, but with a caveat attached: These pages are not yet final—but they are close.
I read the pages, and, bang!, I got knocked off my feet.
“Holy cow,” I said to myself. “There’s a big piece in this thing about me: I’ve got a big new title now! I’m the Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Middle East! So much for all our hopes about not making a big deal of my mission. There goes our no-title and no-publicity agreement.” (They kept my no-pay arrangement.)
Suddenly, for all practical purposes I’d become another special envoy. Powell had inflated my position into something I didn’t want it to be—not because I am all that modest, but because I wasn’t convinced it would work (an opinion later justified by events). On the other hand, I was excited to learn that the administration’s level of commitment and involvement had moved way up. I really liked it that Secretary Powell had showed what was called the path: We’d try to put the Tenet and Mitchell plans in play on the ground, and this, we hoped, would lead to the final status agreement, and then finally to the Palestinian state. We now had a horizon. The peace process was beginning to look promising.