Trusted Mole - A Soldier's Journey into Bosnia's Heart of Darkness is a military memoir by Milos Stankovic MBE MCIArb, a British Army paratrooper of part Scottish and part Serbian blood, who was Britain's longest serving soldier in the Bosnian War of 1992-95. It relates his first-hand experiences of troubleshooting, mediating and negotiating on behalf of the United Nations Protection Force during the Bosnian War. On publication in April 2000 it was described by the Sunday Times as, "By far the best book to have come out of the Balkan Wars".
Publications
Hardback, 14 April 2000 HarperCollins
Paperback, 14 April 2001 HarperCollins
E-book, 29 January 2015 HarperCollins
Background
By his own admission Stankovic's book and his experiences may never have seen the light of day bar for the fact that he was arrested by the Ministry of Defence Police in October 1997 on suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989 in respect of his activities in Bosnia some two years previously. At the time the arrest provoked major comment in the UK and international media and two adjournment debates in the House of Commons.
Stankovic spent the best part of two-and-a-half years on police bail and in limbo before the Army finally drew a line under the affair in March 2000. Despite the lurid headlines and two lengthy investigations by the MOD Police and the Royal Military Police no evidence of any wrongdoing was found and he was never charged with any offences. He used his time on police bail to set down his account of events in Bosnia. The manuscript was completed in 1998 but could not be presented to the Ministry of Defence for censorship until the Crown Prosecution Service had decided that there was insufficient evidence of any wrongdoing to frame a charge, far less prosecute Stankovic. The manuscript was submitted by HarperCollins to the Balkan Secretariat of the MOD in April 1999. The manuscript was passed for publication without any major request for redactions. Stankovic had exercised self-censorship, knowing that the full story of his involvement in Bosnia would not have been approved. Trusted Mole is, therefore, censored material and represents only the visible aspect of Britain's involvement in the Bosnian War.
Synopsis
"He was the outstanding liaison officer of his time. He did for Britain in the 1990s what Fitzroy MacLean had done in the 1940s, and in the same turbulent corner of Europe." Martin Bell OBE, veteran BBC war correspondent.
Preamble. Trusted Mole is written in two parts covering each of the author's long deployments to Bosnia operating under the nom de guerre Mike Stanley. His part-Scottish and part-Serbian ancestry equipped him with linguistic skills and psychological insights into both the Western and Eastern mentalities that collided in the Balkans in the 1990s. Furthermore, not only did he speak Serbo-Croatian but he had also studied Russian at Manchester University and in Minsk in the former Soviet Union, further adding to his unique cross-cultural world view. He had also been formally trained in psychological warfare and had been involved with the establishment of Britain's post-Cold War arms control organization. He had served in Africa training Communist FRELIMO troops for the Mozambiquan government in the late 1980s and had served with the UN in Iraq and Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War. All these experiences helped shape his understanding of the complexities of the wars in the Balkans.