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

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

Milos Stankovic

A high-octane account by a decorated major in the British Army of his high-level dealings with the Bosnian Serb leadership, of his running a ‘Schindler’s List’ operation in Sarajevo, and of his extraordinary subsequent arrest by Ministry of Defence police on suspicion of betraying secrets to the Serbs.Trusted Mole is the powerful and disturbing first-hand account of a British soldier of part Yugoslav origin painfully caught up in the savage maelstrom of the Bosnian war. Armed only with the pseudonym ‘Mike Stanley’ and an antiquated Serbo-Croat vocabulary, Milos Stankovic – an officer in the Parachute Regiment – worked as interpreter and go-between for two British brigadiers and two British UN generals, Mike Rose and Rupert Smith.His experiences plunged him deeper and deeper into Bosnia’s heart of darkness, where all human life was lived in extremis. His own Balkan heritage likewise drew him in: his Scottish grandmother had been a nurse on the Salonika front in the First World War; his father was a former Royalist Yugoslav who had fought in the Second World War; and his mother in 1945 had driven one of the first UN ambulances around Bosnia and Montenegro.In helping to negotiate ceasefires between rival warlords, securing the release of UN hostages and organising the escape from Sarajevo of stricken families, Milos Stankovic was propelled from one nerve-wracking crisis to another. Throughout he was engaged in the highly dangerous game of bridging the gap between alien Balkan and Western mentalities. His was a role for which there was no military rule-book, and in the general climate of suspicion and paranoia his close contacts with the Bosnian Serb leadership of Dr Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic caused him to be branded by the Americans and the Bosnian Muslims as a Serb spy in the UN and later as a British spy – General Rose’s ‘trusted mole’.In a final, horrific twist, the author was arrested by the British authorities on suspicion of being a Serb spy. At journey’s end, Milos Stankovic was now confronted with the awful and inescapable truth of ‘Mike Stanley’.

Copyright (#ulink_3a132c08-4b8d-5fb5-b689-77c5fcde8dc9)

HarperCollinsPublishers

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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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Source ISBN: 9780006530909

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007441457

Version: 2015-01-06

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Praise (#ulink_820d8e4c-cd0f-552f-ab05-310b0ac74b6a)

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 (#ulink_6559127b-071b-5044-b254-ee5796732e81)

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 (#u063d2683-bb94-5dc2-bed2-809e9cf95ba7)

Title Page (#ubd99a8d4-5e0c-5b9b-8a76-4c6a63c955c6)

Copyright (#ulink_9d9f64de-9a63-5d9c-861f-89b5a31645b3)

Praise (#ulink_5c3798b8-9468-540e-b664-67780a510c8e)

Dedication (#ulink_82afbdb8-ab02-5873-a2c8-8ace4b801171)

Foreword by Martin Bell OBE, MP (#ulink_ac2f7d80-263c-5691-9194-c159ae827719)

‘Mother Bosnia’ (#ulink_f28f3242-5128-50a0-80c8-5c58073ff54a)

PART ONE 1992–1993 (#ulink_b8e0783e-e536-5f30-bf42-fcb8b1ce56c9)

Baby Blue (#ulink_b8e0783e-e536-5f30-bf42-fcb8b1ce56c9)

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