Quagmires of Terrain and Logistics Hamper Arrival of U.S. Troops, Departure of U.N.

ZUPANJA, Croatia —  Ankle-deep in mud after arriving at this boggy town next to the Sava River, U.S. Army officials immediately scrambled to set up a base camp for some of the 20,000 Americans sweeping into Bosnia-Herzegovina.

They found a nearby lumberyard and negotiated to pitch tents and park vehicles on the gravel and asphalt there, to keep from becoming hopelessly mired in the sludge. But when they returned the following day, the gates were locked and a different manager said the lumberyard was unavailable.

If this were war, the Army could requisition the facilities. But in times of peace, they must go through sometimes long and arduous negotiations as they endure biting cold and unrelenting mud.

“One thing that is challenging us now is the reality of doing business in the region,” said Brig. Gen. James P. O’Neal, one of two assistant division commanders in charge of the 500 soldiers who have so far arrived at this small railhead after a tortuous six-day, 600-mile journey from permanent bases in Germany. But he added: “This is a powerful army. Once you establish momentum, it’s hard to stop.”

The confused scenes at Zupanja provide only a small glimpse of what can go awry as the 60,000-strong NATO-led peace implementation force struggles through unknown territory and rough winter weather to get into place in Bosnia.

Some already see the operation, code-named “Joint Endeavor,” as the biggest military planning and logistics challenge since the end of the Cold War. It is one that requires moving thousands of troops from more than 20 nations into a remote, war-torn country, while at the same time re-equipping thousands more already there so they can make the switch from lightly armed U.N. peacekeeping duty to combat-ready peace enforcement.

On top of this, NATO planners must also find ways to squeeze U.N. peacekeepers not joining the alliance-led mission onto overloaded, often primitive roads and get them moving in the opposite direction so they can leave.

“If you’re a logistician and you have a weak heart or intestinal problems, you probably ought not to sign up for this job,” summed up U.S. Maj. Gen. William N. Farmen, from his headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia. Upon Farmen’s shoulders rests most of the burden of moving the Implementation Force into place, keeping it supplied once it arrives, then turning it around and getting it out at the end of a year.

The nature of the Bosnia mission, one of peace rather than war, in many ways makes Farmen the operation’s key general. The success or failure of the mission will rest far more on the ability of platoon and company commanders to defuse local tensions than on the brilliance of any grand, sweeping strategy.

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Farmen’s role has nothing to do with flanking movements or ground assaults. It has everything to do with getting new helmets to the Pakistanis, fuel to the French, laundry facilities for the headquarters personnel in Zagreb--and gravel to soak up water seeping into American tents in Zupanja.

More than anyone, Farmen, together with a staff that will eventually number about 400, must make sure a myriad of complex elements somehow mesh together into a big picture--a picture in which finding supplies to sustain the growing American force here is only a small part.

He may be an American general, but on this operation Farmen works for NATO and so must track the forces of all participating nations.

“You’re Yanks and want to get the bridge across, but down here, I’ve got Spaniards trying to get into Mostar, Malaysians trying to get their equipment and Ukrainians who need help in lots of different ways,” he said, stabbing at various points of a map of the Balkans.

Helping get 410 Egyptian peacekeepers from a base near Sarajevo over to the Croatian coast and onto a ship home is tomorrow’s problem.

Farmen is also the one who knows it’s going to cost $330,000 each day to feed the Implementation Force, known as IFOR. That’s an average of $5.50 per soldier, which makes an annual food bill of $1.3 billion.

“Some need more, others less,” he said. “If you’re Malaysian, you eat a bag of rice and you’re off and running. If you’re a Yank, you expect a little bit more. The $5.50 is an average.”

Fuel? That’s just over a quarter of a million dollars a day.

“We figure 98 cents a gallon,” Farmen said.

The rules of IFOR’s deployment make it hard for the general to move fast. The tanks, the heavy guns and combat gear may provide all the body language of an aggressive military force, but when it comes time to find a place for 500 weary Americans to bed down for the night, a more benign reality applies: negotiate.

“We’re not an invading army, we’re not an occupying army,” Farmen noted. “We can take over [Croatian] government facilities at no cost, but on any private facility we choose to take over, we have to contract with the owner.”

And so a team of specialists has been deployed to the field whose only job is to negotiate and write contracts for buying everything from gravel to soup, for renting buildings for a headquarters or a field for troops to pitch tent. In a part of the world where such deals are done in cash--preferably German marks--NATO also supplies the bagman.

“[It is] a guy with a bag of money who pays these people,” noted Farmen. “If you had to design a system to do this, you wouldn’t do it the way we’re doing it.”

Other unexpected logistics problems have also worked to slow IFOR’s initial deployment.

In Germany, for example, U.S. Army officials initially complained about difficulties of getting ahold of railroad locomotives from the German Federal Railway.

Then they faced delays getting troop trains started because the Czech Parliament first took longer than expected to approve the allied plan to send American troops through their country, then imposed limits on the number of trains permitted to cross each day.

Hungarian border guards contributed to the frustration by holding up one troop train more than four hours at the Croatian frontier to conduct a detailed documents check.

These problems, coupled with bad weather, have slowed deployment, but the NATO-led force was still able to take over responsibility for Bosnia peacekeeping from the U.N. virtually on schedule Wednesday.

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Senior Pentagon officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, insist that other deadlines, such as creating a 2 1/2-mile-wide zone of separation between forces of all the conflict’s warring parties within 30 days of taking control, can still be met.

But as IFOR moves forward methodically, it must balance the needs of deployment with the needs of the soldiers beginning to pour into Bosnia.

Zupanja, a town of about 15,000, will soon become a key staging area, eventually hosting about 2,500 soldiers. But the headaches here are numerous.

The soggy tent town being erected has no electricity, running water, bathrooms or telephones. The Navy Seabees who were supposed to have arrived Friday to help construct the tent town were delayed three days so that they could take a training course in land-mine awareness. One brigade was shipped a preponderance of bubbly bottled water instead of regular water. Supplies of gravel--needed to battle the mud--are limited.

With finite amounts of wood available, outhouses are being constructed in part with what was intended to be tent flooring, and officials are considering airlifting port-a-potties from the United States. Soldiers pack the ground beneath their tents with sand or straw, hoping to dry out the mud.

Army officials hope to begin construction of a more permanent tent town Monday on a 1,100-meter airstrip outside Zupanja. But before any new construction can begin, the boggy field must be plied with gravel, a task that requires that the dirt road be compacted and scraped clear of mud.

Showers and bathrooms have yet to be constructed. The water quality has not been determined, and more tents must be pitched as soldiers continue to pour in.

Meanwhile, Farmen and other senior U.S. officers insist that the delays don’t mean they have to start taking risks to catch up.

“We’re not going to do anything that’s going to get the troops into trouble,” Farmen said, speaking of the Sava River bridge. “This is not a tactical crossing . . . under fire. We’re going to do it when everything is right and then start using it.”

Times staff writer Art Pine in Washington contributed to this report.