[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 84 (Monday, June 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6094-H6096]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              NATIONAL GUARD AND RESERVE FORCES IN BOSNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Montgomery] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MONTGOMERY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to the 
first class, professional job that our Reserve and National Guard 
forces are doing who have been called up to serve in Bosnia. These 
citizen soldiers have voluntarily left their regular employment and 
have answered the call once again when the country has needed them. As 
I speak today, men and women from the reserves are filling critical 
positions in the rebuilding of that wartorn region of the Balkans. 
These actions have been highlighted today by an article on the front 
page of the Wall Street Journal. I want to share this article with my 
colleagues:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 10, 1996]

Executive Action--An Army Reserve Unit Guides Reconstruction of Postwar 
                                 Bosnia

                          (By Thomas E. Ricks)

       Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina.--U.S. Army Col. Michael Hess, 
     in his pin-striped

[[Page H6095]]

     blue suit, leather suspenders, yellow tie and longish hair, 
     looks more like an international banker than a military 
     officer. And the issue on the table at this relief workers' 
     meeting has a distinctly unmilitary flavor.
       ``This distribution of diapers, where is that going to 
     be?'' the colonel asks. In eastern Bosnia, replies the woman 
     from Care International.
       Despite his civilian camouflage, Col. Hess plays a key role 
     in the six-month-old U.S. military effort in Bosnia. He is 
     operations officer of the 353rd Civil Affairs Command, a 
     little-known Bronx, N.Y. Army Reserve unit that is quietly 
     coordinating the NATO-led peace-keeping mission here with 
     international civil-reconstruction efforts. With its wealth 
     of military experience and civilian skills, the unit tries to 
     help bond Bosnia together economically, physically and 
     politically. Members currently work with, to name a few, the 
     Sarajevo tram system, utilities, the international agency 
     overseeing national elections and the local World Bank 
     office.
       The 353rd can tackle such diverse tasks because its 
     soldiers make up what may be the world's most economically 
     sophisticated military unit. Col. Hess, once an armored-
     cavalry commander, is Citicorp's relationship manager for 
     Scandinavia, Finland, and the Benelux nations. The 353rd also 
     includes a professor of financial economics, a vice president 
     of the U.S. unit of a Dutch Bank holding company, a Schering-
     Plough Corp. environmental engineer, a mechanical engineer, 
     the supervisor of bus maintenance for New York City and a 
     Merrill Lynch & Co. broker.
       In Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, the 353rd functions as a 
     band of armed middlemen, melding military units from 34 
     nations and more than 100 diverse relief and aid groups. ``We 
     explain to the military who these guys are and what their 
     capabilities are--and explain to these [other] guys what the 
     military does,'' Col. Hess says. ``The military thinks 
     [relief workers] are a bunch of tree huggers, and they think 
     the military is a bunch of protofascists. In fact, we're all 
     dedicated professionals on both sides,'' he says.
       When U.S. forces entered Bosnia in December, fearful of 
     snipers and mines, combat units of the First Armored Division 
     occupied the limelight. But the past six months have gone 
     more smoothly than expected. U.S. forces have suffered only 
     one hostile death as the three warring factions were 
     separated, heavy weapons placed in holding areas, and 
     minefields mapped and, in places, cleared.


                        preparing for elections

       Now there is more emphasis on civilian tasks, notably on 
     preparing for extraordinarily complex national elections in 
     September. This moves the fighting bankers and bureaucrats of 
     the 353rd to the forefront. If the U.S. mission is judged a 
     success, it may well be due as much to the 353rd's 
     calculators and laptops as to the howitzers and machine guns 
     of the First Armored.
       ``These guys are doing fantastic work to support the 
     elections,'' says Ed Joseph, the liaison officer between the 
     military and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in 
     Europe, which will oversee the elections. Already, soldiers 
     of the 353rd have computerized the messy Bosnian voting rolls 
     and begun teaching instructors who will train poll operators.
       As the U.S. military shrinks to fit post-Cold War 
     circumstances, it necessarily makes more use of its 970,000-
     strong reserves and National Guard. From an old Turkish 
     castle overlooking Sarajevo, a Kansas National guard unit 
     operates a countermortar radar system. Reservists from New 
     York staff the U.S. military press office in Tuzla. A recent 
     Air Force C-130 flight into northern Bosnia had a crew from 
     the West Virginia Air National Guard; the commander is an 
     American Airlines pilot and his navigator a writer of 
     computer war games for BDM International Inc. Many of the 
     reservists will head home this month, having completed their 
     six-month stint.
       ``They're downsizing the military, but they're not 
     downsizing what the military has to do, so they're using 
     reservists to pick up the load,'' says Jeff Lane, a military 
     pilot who is a database engineer for Lockheed Martin Corp.


                             a central role

       No reserve unit has a more central role than the 353rd. 
     ``For most military people, looking at civil affairs is like 
     pigs looking at a wristwatch,'' Col. Hess says. They ``kind 
     of like it, are intrigued by it, but they don't really know 
     what it does.'' As recognition dawns that American success 
     turns on nonmilitary goals, the 353rd has been allowed to 
     commit ``mission creep'' and become deeply involved in 
     Bosnia's economic and political affairs.
       As troubleshooter for Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime 
     minister who oversees the civilian rebuilding effort, Col. 
     Hess is here to assess humanitarian problems in Serb-held 
     territory of eastern Bosnia. Sipping espresso in the 
     marketplace of Pale, the Bosnian Serb ``capital,'' he hears a 
     deep rumble in the distance. It isn't clear whether it is an 
     exploding antitank mine or just thunder. Col. Hess seems 
     unruffled. ``That's interesting,'' he shrugs.
       He joins a meeting of international aid workers, where his 
     natty attire contrasts sharply with that of the man from the 
     French aid group Medicin Sans Frontieres, with his blue 
     jeans, sandals, shoulder-length hair and cigarette holder.
       Col. Hess has been a suit-and-tie man since taking master's 
     degrees simultaneously in European history at Columbia 
     University and in business at New York University a decade 
     ago. For Citicorp in northern Europe, he both handles 
     inquiries and sells the bank's services. Essentially, he 
     says, ``I'm a facilitator'' for Citicorp--``not very 
     different from this job.''


                              key to peace

       Each officer of the 353rd feels his speciality holds the 
     key to peace. Maj. William Robbins, Jr., chief of maintenance 
     for the New York City Transit Authority's bus department, is 
     one example. To implement the peace agreement, he says in a 
     gravely New York voice, ``the biggest thing is freedom of 
     movement.'' Thus, his job includes getting more Sarajevo 
     trams on the tracks to free buses for intercity travel--
     letting more people cross factional boundaries as envisioned 
     by the peace accord signed in Dayton, Ohio.
       He strides through Sarajevo's main tram yard wearing 
     fatigues, complete with as Screaming Eagle patch of the 101st 
     Airborne Division on his right shoulder commemorating two 
     years as an infantryman in Vietnam. He pauses before Bus 259, 
     which has 62 bullet holdes in its windshieid and 26 more in 
     the engine panel below. Its engine, wiring and axles are 
     being cannibalized for other buses.
       ``One of the things I didn't expect is how closely related 
     it would be to what we do'' in New York, he says. Bullet 
     holes aside, the main differences are the mines still 
     embedded along the tramway in suburbs formerly held by 
     Bosnian Serbs. Maj. Robbins is lining up a Norwegian aid 
     group to get the mines removed so workers can repair the 
     line. A shell creater in Sarajevo, he adds, isn't really 
     different from a Bronx pothole: ``It does the same damage to 
     the undercarriage of the vehicle.''
       Mines also are a problem for Lt. Col. Mark Dunaiski, a 
     former product engineer from Texas Instruments, Inc., who is 
     the 353rd's electricity liaison officer. For Bosnians, 
     electricity carriers profoundly political implications. 
     ``Electricity,'' he says, ``is one of the few national 
     systems . . . that ties them together.'' Because the system 
     crisscrosses everyone's territory, he says, the various sides 
     must cooperate quietly even when refusing to admit it in 
     public. For example, Bosnian Serbs will provide power to 
     Gorazde, the embattled Muslim pocket in eastern Bosnia, which 
     in turn will pass power to the southern Serb town of Foca. 
     When Col. Dunaiski found that mines along transmission lines 
     were blocking repair work, he had Army helicopters fly local 
     technicians to examine damage from the air.


                             number, please

       Col. John Stroeble uses telecommunications to bind together 
     Bosnia's factions. Formerly of AT&T Corp., he sees an analogy 
     between the breakup of AT&T and the breakup of Yugoslavia. 
     Bizarre at first blush--after all, Sprint and MCI never 
     literally opened fire on Ma Bell--the comparison makes sense 
     as he talks about the politics of Balkan area codes. Bosnian 
     Serbs now use the 381 country code, the same as Serbia 
     proper. Col. Stroeble wants them to switch to the 387 used by 
     Bosnia and to re-establish telephone links to Sarajevo, 
     creating the physical conditions for dialogue. 
     ``Telecommunications and electronic media were kind of like a 
     weapon in this war,'' he says.
       He also is clearing up after the North Atlantic Treaty 
     Organization. Partly because of its autumn bombing raids 
     against Serb command and control systems, nine of 11 radio 
     transmission towers for telephones in Bosnian Serb territory 
     were destroyed. He is trying to establish cellular service, 
     which ``would be quite helpful to the economy and the 
     elections.''


                             military might

       The soldier-executives of the 353rd sometimes use military 
     might to get their work done. After departing Serbs destroyed 
     the waterworks in a Sarajevo suburb, Maj. Larry Adrian, 353rd 
     water-supply expert who works as an environmental manager for 
     Schering-Plough, asked French and Italian troops to establish 
     a perimeter so a major well field wouldn't be hit during the 
     next transfer of territory under peace-agreement terms.
       But he was too late to protect a water station in the hills 
     northeast of Sarajevo. He points at the charred remains of 
     its controls, installed with exquisite workmanship by the 
     Austro-Hungarian empire in 1892. Before abandoning the 
     station, he says, Bosnian Serbs ``ripped the guts out, took 
     out the switches and controls, which cost a lot of money, and 
     then they trashed it.'' He points to pipes conveying water 
     from springs deep inside the mountain. ``They just walked 
     through with a sledge-hammer and broken the pipes. It annoys 
     you because it's sheer destruction.'' He has Italian army 
     engineers building a water bypass so locals can clean the 
     mess.
       When Lt. Col. Mark Cataudella, a mechanical and electrical 
     engineer from Providence, R.I., arrived in Sarajevo, his top 
     priority as natural-gas liaison officer was addressing 
     injuries wrought by the city's estimated 67,000 illegal 
     natural-gas connections, which during the seige accounted for 
     most of the energy consumed in the city. The lethal 
     combination of unauthorized taps, homemade burners and 
     odorless gas led to explosions that killed four to six 
     people every month. He worked with a British aid group and 
     the French military to rebuild a gas-distribution facility 
     to odorize the gas and maintain constant pressure. Since 
     then, there have been no deaths from gas explosions.
       But the turnover of Serb-held suburbs keeps him busy in 
     unexpected ways. When

[[Page H6096]]

     the first district was transferred, departing residents left 
     behind nasty surprises by opening gas valves, causing several 
     small fires. ``For the next transfer, we put soldiers on top 
     of the valves,'' he says. That created a new problem: ``They 
     knew the gas was off, so it made it easier for them to take 
     meters and regulators.''
       In each area where the 353rd operates, rebuilding is 
     complicated by Bosnia's simultaneous conversion from 
     socialism to free markets. Smoothing that change is the main 
     task of two 353rd members detailed to the World Bank office 
     here. ``It used to be the ministry would tell [banks] to lend 
     money to a certain concern, and at the end of the year they'd 
     get an interest payment,'' says Col. Renato Bacci, in 
     civilian life a vice president of the American-services unit 
     of ABN Amro Holding NV, the Dutch bank holding company.
       Col. Bacci, a Chicagoan, is teaching Bosnian bankers about 
     cash-flow statements and balance sheets. His colleague, Lt. 
     Col. Gerry Suchanek, a former Special Forces officer who 
     teaches economics at the University of Iowa, says that 
     ``everything I do at home is teaching capitalism. Everything 
     I do here is similar.''
       Asked what business book best applies to his unit's work 
     here ``Managing Chaos'' perhaps? Brig. Gen. Thomas Matthews 
     says his soldiers are writing the real book. ``Let's put it 
     this way,'' says the commander, who is a district sales 
     manager for AT&T's Lucent Technologies Inc. spinoff. ``The 
     art of war is very mature. It goes back thousands of years to 
     Sun Tzu. The art of peace is much newer. . . . We're learning 
     about it here.''

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