Fred Cuny: The Lost American

Fred did not believe in providing direct aid to people suffering from political or natural disasters. Fred always took a strategic view. Direct aid plays into the hands of the protagonists, corrupts governments, distorts economies and is often counter productive to the very objectives of the aid donors. With regard to Sarajevo, Fred believed that the primary objective was to ensure the survivability of the city in the face of the siege imposed by the Bosnian Serb forces. He felt that the multi-ethnic City of Sarajevo could survive an extended siege until the free world intervened in the conflict, if only basic food, water and natural gas supplies could be maintained. While the Bosnian Serbs had heavy artillery, the Bosnian troops outnumbered the Bosnian Serbs. Thus, the Bosnian Serbs could not take the city in a military action, but hoped to take the city by depriving the people of basic needs.

During night and day, heavy and small arms echoed throughout the city as the troops fought skirmishes in the mountains surrounding the city. Daily, a few shells would explode within the city and rocket propelled grenades would impact on the buildings. Just a mile or two from downtown Sarajevo, snipers looked down from the mountains that surround the city, and each week two or three people were killed by the snipers although the city was "protected" by United Nations forces.

The Serb's favorite sniper targets were people who came to a spring for water. The spring is located on the site of a brewery in the center of town, and was directly under the mountain ridges held by the Serbs. Prior to January 1994, this was the only water supply available to the people of Sarajevo. The favorite Serb sniper weapon was a 50-caliber bolt action rifle that fired five-inch rounds like those of WWII aircraft machine guns. Their victims were most often the women or children who came with plastic jugs to carry water from the spring to their homes three or four miles away.

While sniper fire was a part of the risk in living and working in Sarajevo, statistically, more people died of gunshots on the streets of Washington D.C. than on the streets of Sarajevo. The risk was real but not extreme. Barricades were installed throughout the city which protected pedestrians from the snipers in the mountains nearby. Automobile routes were created which cut across sidewalks, through back alleys and behind tall buildings to permit the people to carry on their daily routine. In unprotected areas, driving strategies called for high speed, constant speed changes and changing from lane to lane to prevent the snipers from getting a fix on the car. One-way traffic signs were obviously disregarded and signal lights at all intersections were not working, and would have been ignored if they were.

Fred's company, Intertect, designed and installed a water pumping and filtration plant in Sarajevo which provided 80% of the water for most of the siege period between January 1, 1994 and the Dayton Accords in November 1995, and was the only water delivered to the city during the heavy siege period in the Spring of 1995. Three water pumping and filtration systems housed in six forty-foot shipping containers were flown into Sarajevo Airport in six Air Force C-130s. The Intertect crew had only ten minutes to off-load each of the containers because the C-130s would only stay on the ground that long. Because the airport was in Bosnian Serb territory, Intertect had to sneak the six containers past the Serb guards, through the five mile long highway to the center of town called Sniper Alley and three miles beyond the city into highway tunnels where four of the units would be protected from Serb mortars and sniper fire. The two remaining units would be trucked up a winding steep grade to be located only 500 feet directly under Serb mortar positions on the mountain ridge above.

The latter system would be protected by a one hundred foot by 50-foot structure made from salvaged construction materials taken from the bombed city. Steel railroad tracks spaced about a foot apart formed the structure with brick filling the gaps between the steel rails. The whole structure was covered with three feet of dirt, and finally, old car bodies were piled on top to prevent the mortar rounds from chipping away at the protective dirt cover.

As the construction began, Serb mortars dropped shells on the site. Fred called the Air Force to silence the mortars, but this was early in the conflict when U.S. planes were not permitted to become involved militarily. However, the Air Force did several supersonic fly-bys which seemed to convey the message to the Serbs that they should cease. This strategy worked for a few weeks, but became less effective as the Serbs began to realize that the planes would not actually shoot at them. However, the tactic provided Intertect with the time needed to install the water pumps and filtration systems.

The water systems pumped water out of the river that flowed through the city and then 400 feet up to an unused, 100 year old and almost forgotten, Ottoman Empire reservoir. The reservoir provided gravity flow for the water though ancient aqueducts to the older part of the city. With the system operating, many protected sources of water would be established for the people of Sarajevo. As audacious as this all sounds, Fred and his crew designed and installed the system in less than a year and the water systems were operating on January 1, 1994. Fred accomplished this goal by walking over, through and around the obstacles imposed by the United Nations, the local bureaucracies, and the Bosnian Serb protagonists. Many people on both sides of the conflict dislike him as a result, but he was clear in purpose to save the people of Sarajevo. Fred was reportedly on a Bosnian Serb assassination list, and his chief engineer, a Bosnian engineer was forced to leave Sarajevo after the water system was activated because of threats from the local mafia.

Bureaucratic hurdles were confronted even after the system was operational. The government public works bureaucracy would not approve the activation of the water system until the water was tested. Samples were shipped to the U.S. Air Force base in Frankfurt which determined that the water was more pure than the base supply. The Public Works Department continued to obstruct the activation of the system, now claiming that it was possible for the Serbs to poison the water. What Fred did not know at the time was that politically connected mafia organizations was selling water from tanker trucks that seemingly were being filled at the central spring without being fired upon. The Intertect water system provided the only competition for this lucrative business.

In typical Fred Cuny fashion, in order to break the constraints imposed by the public works bureaucracy, Fred arranged a press conference to announce the successful completion of the project, and during the conference, indicated that all that remained was for the government to OK the activation of the system. He implied to the reporter that the government was dragging its feet. In a subsequent press conference with top government leaders who were soon to travel to the U.S. to appeal for help, the same reporter asked the Prime Minister "When would the water be turned on?" The reporter indicated that this question would also be the first question asked by the press in the U.S. when he arrived in the U.S.

Not wanting to depend completely on this strategy, and without approval from the government, Fred and his crew went to the water system site in the middle of the night and started pumping water into the old reservoir. He knew that once the water supply became available, the people would not permit it to be shut down again. It worked, and the government bureaucracy then gave its blessing but declared that the water could only be used as "technical water," not for consumption. However, given the option of drinking water that may have some bacteria, rather than facing the possibility of becoming the target of a sniper, the outcome was clear. The water supply became the primary source of water for the city in the coming months, and was the only water available during the heavy siege of the spring of 1995.

In February 5, 1994, shortly after the system was operational, the Serbs shelled the Sarajevo Market and killed 68 people. At that moment, Fred was escorting Peter Jennings of ABC News to the tunnel that housed water system. They were less than three blocks away when the shell hit. The carnage, which was probably even greater than the Serbs had sought, was sufficient to outrage the rest of the world, and resulted in a brief period in which peace appeared to be imminent. As history tells us, it was not to be, but at the time, it seemed so.

With the water system working and peace seemingly at hand, the city began to open up. The snipers stopped shooting, sidewalk cafe's opened, and the city began to repair the streetcar rail system. Some protective barricades were removed, one-way traffic streets were restored and signal lights were repaired and made operational. City police began to enforce traffic laws, which, of course, meant no driving the wrong way on one-way streets, no driving across the sidewalks, and above all, stopping for the red lights.

Electricity was still available at the Intertect house for only a few hours a day, so as usual, the Intertect team continued to eat the evening meal by candle light bundled in our jackets to remain warm in the 36 to 40 degree house temperature. The discussion at these dinner sessions usually included a number of subjects including, the day's activities, future plans and strategies to overcome obstacles, criticism of the UN handling of the Bosnian conflict, and always, some discussion of glider flying. We joked and discussed elaborate plans for stealing a single engine Yugoslav fighter plane that sat at the entrance to the airport. After all, if we could get six containers past the Serbs, why not an airplane.

During one particular evening, after peace appeared to be breaking out, Fred was quiet and did not participate in the discussion. Tongue-in-cheek comments were made by others to the effect that without the gun fire, Sarajevo had lost its charm, and that it was difficult to get to sleep without the machine guns rattling throughout the night. While in jest, these comments seemed to trigger Fred's participation in the discussion. He responded to our facetious comments with a more serious response that "it was time to move on." When questioned as to why, he admitted that he was stopped by the city police and cited for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. It seems that, out of habit, he drove down the street from the office to the main intersection in town where, as usual, he drove across the sidewalk and onto a one-way street, the wrong way. To make matters worse, a police officer was standing on the sidewalk next to his crossing point. So, among Fred's many accomplishments, he had added another reason to be famous. He had been issued the first traffic citation in Sarajevo since the beginning of the conflict. Peace and civilization were coming to Sarajevo, and it was time to move on.

Fred did leave, although his team stayed to ensure that the water system continued to operate. Intertect continued to operate across the confrontation lines to ensure that natural gas continued to be delivered from the Bosnian Serb side, and Intertect began rebuilding schools to help the city return to normal. Fred went to Albania and started programs to build schools after the collapse of the Communist regime of that country. In January 1995 he made his first trip into Chechnya with plans to take two other staff members in April. On exiting Chechnya, he wrote an article critical of the Russian handling of the Chechen civil war and cancelled the participation of his staff for a subsequent trip in April, which was to be his last.

In Sarajevo, the water continued to pump and Intertect was instrumental in maintaining the delivery of natural gas from Russia through Serbia and Bosnian Serb territory. The water system provided 80% of the city's water supply until the heavy siege of the spring of 1995 when it provided the only water to the city. Many officials believe that, without the water, Sarajevo could not have survived the siege until the Dayton Accords brought peace in November 1995. Ironically, Fred was killed in Chechnya at the very moment his Sarajevo survival strategy was working most effectively.

Fred advised against the U.S. operation in Somalia that turned out to be a disaster. He was right. He overcame bureaucratic inertia of the U.S. Government in Northern Iraq that resulted in saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kurds. He advised NATO as to how to stop Serb violations of the 'No-Fly" zone. Two days later the planes were shot down and the bombing of Tuzla ceased. His studies of the status of food and medical supplies in Russia after the 1992 coup, contrary to popular opinion, revealed that the threat of famine did not exist, but that medical institutions and supplies were in terrible shape. He was probably the only person in the world who ever told Mother Teresa that one of her programs was a mistake. He was right on this one too.

Fred single-handedly created foreign policy and could claim major accomplishments that may not be duplicated for years. Yet, Fred was given to exaggerated stories of less important events in his life, including soaring. Clearly, he had the ego that was required to take on the United Nations, the State Department, USAID and many humanitarian organizations when he believed that their policies were counter productive. But his ego was not the driving force as suggested in the FRONTLINE special entitled "The Lost American." The driving force was his compassion for people suffering from natural or political catastrophes, not his ego. Fred was truly one-of-a-kind, and will not soon be replaced.