A Wide Open Playing Field for the 'Great Game'

By MIKE O'CONNOR
1502 words
15 October 1996
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oct. 14 -- After work, the second in command of Bosnia's secret intelligence service stopped by his young mistress's place, an apartment building scarred by wartime shelling and postwar graffiti.

He was standing next to his car, reaching into the back seat for the bag of apples he had brought for her mother when he took the first bullet, witnesses said. It hit the bulletproof vest that he wore by habit, but it was enough to knock him on his back, so the killer could walk up close to fire the second bullet into his head.

Nedzad Ugljen was shot down about three weeks ago, and his death has been of great interest to intelligence agencies from every corner of the world.

Sarajevo today, like Vienna or Berlin during the cold war, has become a place where the untidy edges of different worlds jostle one another. After a few decades of dueling between Communism and capitalism, there has been a return of sorts to the Great Game, Kipling's name for the contest for territory and control that was played out more than a century ago. These days some of the players and prizes are different, but the game is on, and one place it is being played is Sarajevo.

An agent for one intelligence service estimated that several hundred spies were in Bosnia -- and he was speaking of the agents of only one country. The spies are here, but no one knows for certain who they are or how many there are.

Mr. Ugljen's own intelligence agents, the spies from other countries who have penetrated his service, and those like the American agents who do not approve of his agency, have a stake in knowing why he died. So do Sarajevo's criminal networks and the Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb operatives here because they are all connected by the same web. It is likely that one of the groups killed Mr. Ugljen, and they all want to prepare for the fallout and position themselves for whatever is coming next.

Somewhere in each of the conflicting theories about his death slithers the notion that he was killed in a conflict where Bosnians are pawns in a bigger game. But if any of the theories is backed with solid evidence, it is not being made public.

''How convenient it is for the West to have hundreds of relief workers and foreign officials running around the country,'' said a smiling European military officer. ''What a convenient cover for our agents. Just at the same place as the Russians are backing the Serbs, and the Arabs are so close to the Bosnian Muslims.''

The officer, sitting in a coffee shop favored by NATO officers, did not want to explain how he, a self-described military paper-pusher, knew so much about espionage. He smiled again when asked about the convenient cover 50,000 foreign soldiers in Bosnia might provide.

''We're hearing that the Americans killed Ugljen, or maybe their friends in Croat intelligence did them a favor,'' he said, slowly stirring his coffee at an initial meeting. ''It was possibly retaliation for the shooting of the American agent last summer. You know the Americans become unpleasant if someone shoots one of them.'' An American Government employee was injured near Sarajevo in July in what was officially described as an attempted carjacking.

The Balkans may seem confusing enough with three ethnic groups in conflict, but Bosnian Croats and Muslims also have big brothers who do not like each other.

''The Muslim service is close to Iran, so the Americans have acquired the Croats,'' said the officer. ''The U.S. would prefer to get inside the Muslim intelligence service, but they can't, so now they want to destroy it.''

At one of the expensive restaurants where war profiteers, foreign aid workers and diplomats pretend not to listen to conversations at adjacent tables, a European diplomat straightened the crisp crease in his trousers and said casually, ''We think it was the party.''

He meant the Party of Democratic Action, the governing Muslim political party, which diplomats believe uses members of the secret agency as political enforcers, arms smugglers, extortionists and money launderers. Certain foreign officials and military officers say they believe that their movements and phone calls are rather well monitored by the same group, which is called the Agency for Investigation and Documentation. The Bosnian Government says the service's only duties are to investigate suspected war criminals and to combat terrorism.

The European diplomat, as well as many other diplomats, contend that the Agency for Investigation and Documentation was behind widespread efforts to intimidate opposition political leaders. They say it organized the clubbing attack on the former Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzic, who was injured in June while campaigning in the presidential race.

''The party has done a lot of nasty things,'' the diplomat said, lowering his voice slightly, but not losing his carefree veneer. ''Ugljen was in charge of the people who did them.''

Mr. Ugljen, by nature of his lifelong career in intelligence, would have spent time in the worlds of the military officer and the diplomat, but much of the power and information in Sarajevo is held by men who climbed to the top in the chaos of the war.

Many were small-time thugs and untested police officers when the city came under siege. With their success at making an army from almost nothing and then making themselves rich in the black market, they have catapulted themselves into respectability.

Mr. Ugljen shared their world too, many of them say. When what they will reveal about him intersects with press accounts, a sketchy image emerges. He was 44 and married, with two children. He worked first with the security service of Yugoslavia and held a minor position in the Bosnian city of Mostar just before the war. During the war he rose to supervise a branch of the Bosnian secret police.

The party, Western diplomats say, may be starting to bend under American and European pressure to dismantle the intelligence service. Bosnian Croat leaders have said they will never fully cooperate with a national Government if the Muslim party controls the state security apparatus.

Bosnian Croat political leaders, while denying that they have an intelligence service -- either of their own or one controlled by the Government of Croatia -- say it is vital to have Croatian agents working in the national service.

''The only way there can be a national intelligence service is if the Croats are part of it,'' the diplomat continued, referring to Bosnian Croats, who now hold one seat in the three-member Bosnian presidency, as do the Bosnian Serbs. ''We think the party believed Ugljen knew too much, and they are cleaning house before the Croats come.''

Another theory was advanced by one of Sarajevo's best-known war heroes, who is also one of its most successful war profiteers and a member of the city's inner circle of police, politicians and higher-level crooks.

The war hero now has his own expensive restaurant. Though he commands respect and has a large staff, he is still a bit confused about the use of napkins and cutlery. The staff, in neat uniforms, greeted customers deferentially while the owner sat at a dark corner table.

''It's the Mostar gang,'' he said, head low over a bowl of peasant soup.

He was pointing to the street-criminals-cum-war-criminals who are now organized crime leaders in Mostar. ''Ugljen was building a case on them for the war crimes tribunal,'' he said. ''They had the best motive.''

Mr. Ugljen, the No. 2 man in an intelligence agency the United States wants to destroy, was also the official contact between the United Nations war crimes tribunal and the Bosnian Government.

American officials have been very clear in their goal of either seeing the agency disappear altogether or at least stripping Iranian influence from the Bosnian service.

As foreign agents had time to probe and compare those notes that they wished to share with each other, a different -- if not clearer -- picture emerged. Because it is as plausible and unproven as the other theories, it did not help greatly in determining what might happen next, especially since it, too, is subject to change.

At the same coffee shop as before, the European military officer said that they had come to believe that Mr. Ugljen, just before his death, had become helpful to the Americans.

''Now we think the Iranians killed him,'' he said.

05:01 EDT October 15, 1996

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