POLES APART

Radek Sikorski spent 100 days attempting

to weed out communist plotters from the Polish armed forces. This is his account

Dw6r Chobielin, Poland IT WAS A FRIDAY afternoon. I was, as it happened, on the roof of Chobielin, the old manor house I'm restoring, checking the tiles. They are old and must be laid in an old-fashioned way; the workmen don't always get it right. This time they did, and I was just about to pronounce myself satis- fied when one of them ran up, panting, from the keeper's lodge. There was a tele- phone call, he said, all the way from War- saw.

I ran back to get it. The line was faint the last mile of tele- phone cable leading to Chobielin is of pre-war vintage, the wind rocks the wires and creates an echo — but I made out the voice of Jan Parys, Poland's first civilian, non-communist Minister of Defence. I knew him slightly. We belonged to the same political clubs in Warsaw; his wife, Poland's Madame de Stael, runs one of the city's best-known salons. He had worked on nego- tiating the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland, and had a repu- tation for toughness.

A few years ago I wrote a book about Afghanistan, and had consequently brushed up against the British and American military establish- ments. Minister Parys is a staunch Atlanti- cist, interested in developing better links with those countries. Now, over the crack- ling telephone line, Parys asked whether I would become his deputy, responsible for security policy and foreign relations. It meant giving up my job, taking a salary of $266 per month, slowing down work on the house, and living in polluted Warsaw. I rang my fiancée; within the hour I rang back the minister and accepted.

But those telephone calls were our first mistake. They were bugged, and the listen-

ing ears of military intelligence were not friendly. While the old Polish security police had been purged two years earlier, military intelligence and counter-intelli- gence, known in Polish as WSI, were untouched. They did not like my appoint- ment. I had travelled in Afghanistan on the side of the mujahedeen, and in Angola with Savimbi. My sympathies were unlikely to lie with a corrupt, disloyal, unreformed communist secret service.

So as soon as they heard my name, they knew exactly what to do. By Sunday morn-

ing — meaning that they submitted the information, already laundered through several hands, between Friday night and Saturday noon — the London Observer ran a short, slanted little story about me in its gossip column. That article did what it was meant to do, causing a furore in Poland (`why are our ministers known to the British press and not to us?') and calling the appointment to the attention of Presi- dent Lech Walesa.

It is a time-honoured method. In provin- cial societies, people presume foreigners to be right. When the communists wanted to broadcast something widely, they bounced

the information off foreign sources, even if it had to be the Morning Star. Nowadays, when President Walesa wants to have flat- tering things said about himself, he gets the television news presenters to quote the New York Times, never the Polish press. The hack at the Observer who gave his name to the story patted himself on the back for his 'scoop' the following week; I later confirmed that the WSI (more on them later) had been the ultimate source of the story.

the court usually awards negligible dam- ages. So I could do nothing when the press hinted that British intelligence paid my university fees (I had a standard ILEA grant), and insinuated a `friendship' with Minis- ter Parys, whatever that meant. I could not object when I was pillo- ried for 'disloyally' choosing to take a British passport when, in 1987, I thought I would never be allowed to return to Poland again. 'Radek Sikorski really ought to be in gaol,' wrote one charming woman, 'for travelling armed in Afghanistan in 1986, without the permis- sion of Poland's [then communist] govern- ment.'

Even Gazeta Wyborcza, a Polish newspa- per which prides itself on its cosmopoli- tanism, hit positively Stalinist chords and called me 'an agent of foreign 'capital'. My crime was to have worked for a British company trying to secure investments in Poland. A friend rang up, laughing, to say that, according to Warsaw gossip, I had never been an undergraduate at Oxford at all. The word was out: I had invented my

entire curriculum vitae. Throughout my 100 days in office not once did a Polish journalist ring me to check a story.

But my worst offence by far was to be too pro-Western, too pro-Nato. Those who attacked me and Jan Parys the most viciously were either former communists or old dissidents, members of the former opposition whose sympathies also lie on the Left. There is virtually no newspaper, magazine, or radio station which one of these groups does not control. They fully supported the old Polish defence establish- ment, which had committed itself if not to remaining in the Warsaw Pact, then at least to approaching the West at a snail's pace. I had not anticipated the sheer malice of the attacks. But then I had not expected that the man spearheading this drive away from the West, back towards the East, would be President Walesa.

My ministerial office was in a small villa across the street from the presidential palace. On the other side, the Soviet Embassy — a building much bigger than the presidential palace — towered above me. Inside, fake leather armchairs and brown wallpaper testified to the tastes of previous occupants. General Jaruzelski was said to have recorded the television speech announcing the imposition of martial law there in December 1981. It felt odd to sit in an armchair from which orders for arrests and internments were once barked.

I didn't bother to have the villa swept for bugs. If our neighbours across the garden wanted to listen, a directional microphone

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would have done the trick. Fortunately, the villa stood near Lazienki, Warsaw's St James's Park. Over the next few weeks I became good friends with the ducks in the pond, and I ordered a move to a different location as soon as possible.

My first day in office, I asked for a tele- phone connection to Brussels. 'Three hours wait, two with luck, Minister,' came the reply. Ordinary Warsaw phones now con- nect within a couple of tries. But using the antiquated Defence Ministry exchange I could not dial direct to anywhere outside Warsaw. Those trying to reach me were often connected to the teachers' common room of a primary school in another part of town. Yet I was responsible for the foreign relations of a 220,000-man army. I thought with admiration of my predecessor. How did he manage to do his job without talking to Washington, Moscow or London several times a day? I threatened a couple of gen- erals with early retirement, and a satellite line was installed.

True, an official, ministerial telephone stood by the side of my desk. It was a large chest covered with inscrutable dials and buttons, just like a time machine from a 1930s science-fiction movie. I told the staff to take it away and give me an ordinary Panasonic.

They were surprised: 'But, Minister, you are entitled to a telephone as large as this.' Apparently the size of one's telephone used to be a phallic symbol, a sign of politi- cal potency. But of all my office appliances only the shredder worked tolerably. How did the communists manage to run any- thing at all? A Polish eagle with a crown, our pre- and post-communist state symbol, hung on the wall. On the reverse side was an old cardboard portrait of Lenin. You could change from Lenin to the eagle, and hack again, with just a flick of the wrist.

I soon learned that, although I was a minister, there was virtually no ministry for me to run. I had an office, the Defence Minister had an office, and the other Deputy Minister had an office — and that was it. There was no policy department, no strategic think-tanks, and the first indepen- dent Polish operational plans were written on Parys's orders.

In the past, plans had simply been made in Moscow and delivered in sealed envelopes. We received intelligence assess- ments which still spoke of German revan- chism raising its ugly head, and warned of menacing Nato aircraft encroaching on Polish airspace. Minister Parys said that these comments might be slightly mis- placed; within a week, the reports described Soviet revanchism raising its ugly head and menacing Russian aircraft. Pro- motions had always been given for political obedience rather than excellence of analy- sis. Old habits die hard.

The chief of my secretariat was a slow- witted, dull-eyed, sycophantic, former com- munist. While you cannot rid the Polish army of all its former Communist Party members (membership was required for promotion) you can try to distinguish between those who joined for pragmatic reasons — most of whom were excellent soldiers and very good officers — and those who were the active agents of Soviet control.

This is not as hard as you might imagine. There is a communist way of thinking, and a communist way of behaviour. Rather than taking a problem and finding a solu- tion, someone trained in dialectical materi- alism will find an excuse for why the problem cannot be solved. Such a person will never give you a straight answer, he won't look you in the eye. Rather than say- ing what he believes is true or right, he tells you what he thinks you want to hear. I fired my chief of secretariat within the week. He has just recently been rehired, and given a promotion.

Minister Parys was also busy with per- sonnel matters. At the first meeting of the Military Council, he asked for the resigna- tions of those generals who felt they could gpt support the idea of Poland moving closer to Nato. Soviet spies were also given seven days to come forward with impunity.

Several did. We bade them farewell with Georgian champagne, toasts and gifts of garish landscape paintings. It was the most civilised purge ever conducted.

But while generals could be fired and my staff were under my control, the WSI - for now we must return to them — were not. When we arrived, they were the last, functioning communist organisation which could have taken control of the country should a chillier wind begin to blow from the East once again. And until well after the August coup in the Soviet Union, the WSI leadership in Poland still thought that their time might come.

Remember: this was no ordinary military reconnaissance organisation. After martial law, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, himself a former Defence Minister, had relied upon the WSI to run the army and the country. Current and past WSI officers owned flats and foreign bank accounts, they ran gun- running and smuggling operations, they had their own sources of income and their own contacts in the East and the West. In the last few months of communism, they had sold their secrets to anybody who would pay. They were rich men, virtually self-governing, and they were far from unique in post-communist Europe. They have Russian counterparts — also under unclear political control, if any — and I know of Rumanian ones as well. We will hear more of them in the years to come.

After Jaruzelski's fall, the WSI began looking around for a new patron. Just about the same time, Lech Walesa, Poland's newly elected president, was also looking around for a new power base. Walesa had already alienated most of his former associates — first the old dissidents, then the new Right, who had helped him become president. He saw a weak parlia- ment, an impotent government administra- tion. He saw squabbling politicians, and petty bureaucrats. No one seemed to have any real power — except the old guard. Instead of trying to build a new consensus Walesa took the easy route. It seemed to me that they would help him maintain power, supplying him with information on ministers and potential challengers. He would keep their organisation intact. There is no grand conspiracy — it was all perfect- ly sensible.

It still seems unbelievable, even to me who watched it at close quarters. How Lech Walesa, the symbol of the anti-com- munist revolutions of 1980 and 1989, ulti- mately came to co-operate with the very people he had deposed — and why no one predicted such an outcome — deserves a longer explanation. There is no room for that here. Perhaps it is sufficient to quote The Spectator of 24 November 1990, when I tried to explain the Walesa phenomenon. I

described him as 'uncouth, unpredictable, irresponsible, dictatorial, vain and manipu- lative', yet still hoped that 'he will find him- self institutionally tamed ... he will set a straightforward agenda and pursue it with his customary determination'. But the moral authority of the Polish presidency was not good enough for him. Like the peasant he is at heart, Walesa likes the physical exercise of power, he likes to issue decrees, to order people about, to hire and fire prime ministers at will. Instead of pur- suing a straightforward agenda, Walesa pursues power for its own sake. No one understood this better than the old corn- munists, and no one was better prepared to help him. We had to purge the WSI, both for internal and external reasons. Before Poland could be a credible partner for the West, the service had to stop leaking. And before our democracy could be secure, one branch of government could not be permit- ted to spy on another.

We, the nominal bosses, had to capture the institution in a sudden swoop. We lured its chief — Admiral Wawrzyniak — out of his office on a pretext; an armed team stood by to capture the archives in case of resistance. I was there, I wouldn't have missed watching the death of Poland's last communist institution. But that was also the day that the political battle between the president and the government of Prime Minister Jan Olszewski escalated beyond repair. Walesa had been deprived of his private spy network, and he was livid.

The next skirmishes were over policy. In a communist country, all government departments were ultimately run by the Politburo and the Central Committee. In a post-communist country, it is as if you have removed the brain from the nervous sys- tem. Government departments behave like unco-ordinated limbs, acting in opposition to one another and to the body itself. It is confusing even if all the various branches have the same policy. It becomes a total muddle when, for example, the Defence Ministry and the prime minister want to bring the country closer to Nato, and the president does not.

There were amusing incidents. I was in Brussels, pestering Nato officials, hoping for broader contacts — things like help in teaching foreign languages to our officers — and trying to persuade them that Poland

should be considered part of the West and should lie within the Nato security perime- ter. Unknown to me, Walesa was in Ger- many on the same day, advocating the formation of a new organisation, compris- ing all post-communist and post-Soviet countries, which he called `Nato-bis'. Sur- prised, I rang his chancery to find out what this meant. None of his staff knew. But it sounded a lot like the old Warsaw Pact. I wonder what our Western partners imag- ined our policy to be.

Later I was at diplomatic party in War- saw, chatting, as it happened, to the local KGB station chief. 'Don't you know?' he asked, surprised. 'The Polish-Russian treaty has been finalised.' I didn't know. Neither did the prime minister. Walesa, it emerged, was running his own foreign poli- cy behind the government's back.

Now we did not object to the idea of a treaty — a similar one was signed with Germany — but we did object to some of the clauses, or rather, one clause in partic- ular. The Russians had agreed, at last, to withdraw their troops from Poland. But they wanted to maintain financial and intel- ligence assets in the country. Their military bases — which include airfields, barracks, and shooting ranges — lie, de facto, outside Polish control. They are already used to evade customs and excise taxes and to smuggle goods between Russia and West- ern Europe. They are huge money-making operations for the old Soviet military estab- lishment. If anyone wanted to smuggle nuclear material out of Russia, they would have made the perfect route.

We wanted them closed. The Russians wanted to turn some of them into 'joint ventures', legalising their presence forever. Walesa wanted to go to Moscow and sign a treaty with his new friend, Boris Yeltsin, and he was prepared to let the Russians have their way. It was only the prime minis- ter's veto — he sent a cipher to Moscow, categorically telling the president he did not agree to the clause — and the threat of a major scandal which forced the president to stand up to the Russians at the last minute. A new text was improvised and written out in longhand ten minutes before the signing ceremony.

It was our last success. Not long after- wards, Parys was forced to resign. The prime minister hoped that his absence might induce the president to calm down.

My resignation followed. A few days later, the entire government fell. Now, President Walesa has appointed Waldemar Pawlak, a 32-year-old farmers' party leader, as the new prime minister. Pawlak, a leader of the former United Peasants' Party, was a loyal ally of the Communist Party in Poland's old puppet parliament. He negotiated on the communist side during the round-table negotiations that brought down the old regime in 1989. At last Walesa can work with a man he feels comfortable with: a prime minister who comes directly from the old communist camp, and will not mind who he chooses for friends. So ended our battle.

Were we really so controversial? When I came to the job, I was excited by the prospect of helping transform a War- saw Pact army, trained and equipped by the former Soviet Union — whose officers had sworn their loyalty to the Soviet Union — into a modern Polish army, loyal to Poland only. I had hoped we could make our army into a realistic partner for the West and for Nato. It seemed, a few months ago, that we had a chance.

We were criticised for firing people. But while I am sorry about bringing so many illustrious communist careers to an end, we couldn't talk about joining Nato at the political level while our Moscow-trained operatives were getting caught conducting inept intelligence operations in Western capitals, while some of our Moscow-trained generals kept in touch with their old chums in Russia and while our military hardware remained incompatible with that of the West. Changes had to be made. And while we were not trying to antagonise Russia, we did need to disentangle our security apparatus from theirs. We came into con- flict with the president, but that was not the point. Our real fight was not against Wale- sa himself but against the network of com- munist elites who plague the reform process, not only in Poland but all over the old Eastern bloc.

I fear that Europe is in danger of divid- ing again. The fault line will not follow the Iron Curtain and it will no longer separate the free world from its totalitarian neigh- bours. Instead, it will separate enthusiasti- cally pro-Western, pro-capitalist states from those who have not made a clean break with the past.

On this reckoning, Hungary already lies on the Western side, while Bulgaria, Rumania and the former Soviet Union look set to remain in the East. Czechoslo- vakia is already dividing, with Bohemia joining the West and Slovakia, with its new ex-communist leadership, looking as if it will slide east too.

Poland, whose confused political culture puts it right in the middle, could still go either way. If my 100 days mattered — and I'd like to think that they did — it was because they coincided with the few months when Poland's leaders were trying to uproot the country's old communist elites for good, trying to bring Poland back into the Western camp. We lost this round, but there will be another.