The Bosnian Train and Equip program

Military assistance to Bosnian forces was part of a complex plan to resolve what one former Secretary of State called "the problem from hell." When Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in the early 1990s following the Soviet Union's demise, it released a mix of nationalist and ethnic movements that led to civil war. Ill-disciplined combinations of regular and irregular forces struggled to control territory and protect civilians, sometimes herding them toward ethnically homogeneous enclaves in a process widely referred to as "ethnic cleansing." The intentional displacement of civilian populations, often encouraged by atrocities including mass murder and rape, was a tragic and complex foreign policy problem that defied simple and easy solutions. The program to train and equip the Bosnian Federation Army after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in 1995 was a key element of the U.S. strategy to bring a stable peace to Bosnia. Highly controversial at the time but obscure today, this program was implemented by a small interagency task force widely referred to as the "Train and Equip Program." Despite the Train and Equip Task Force's record of success, the creative techniques it employed, and its high level of accountability, it has never been studied by the government or anyone else for its organizational lessons. This case study is intended to be a helpful contribution in that regard. It provides an authoritative history of the task force's activities and accomplishments, and then an explanation for its performance based on 10 variables extracted from organization and management literature. Investigating and explaining the interagency group's performance with these performance variables, and weighing the importance of each in light of the group's historical experience, yields a compelling explanation for its outstanding performance. The results contribute to a better understanding of interagency teams and also demonstrate why a small, high-performing team can sometimes implement a security assistance program better than the larger national security bureaucracy does through established programs and procedures.