The function of the Wise Men was not to change the process but to back it up. If the mediators were getting hit by stones from all sides, they lived with it, rolled up their sleeves, waded into the mud, and did the dirty work. The Wise Men stood above it all, there to be called on by both sides or by the mediators for advice, recommendations, consultation, or intervention.

The HDC jumped at the idea.

At that point, they had chosen three Wise Men for the Indonesia mission—Surin Pitsuwan, a retired Thai Foreign Minister; Budamir Loncur, a retired Yugoslav Foreign Minister; and Lord Eric Avebury, a Member of the British House of Lords. They now wanted a fourth, an American with military stature—someone with peacekeeping experience, who could handle issues such as how to monitor mechanisms and observers on the ground, and who could talk to the Indonesian military—who everyone thought would be the toughest group to bring into the peace process. Zinni was the obvious choice.

“This is great!” Zinni told Armitage and Brooks. “It’s just the kind of thing I want to do.” He agreed to take on the mission with State Department support, but only as an unpaid private citizen working with the HDC, thus ensuring his independence.

That set the machinery moving.

State Department briefs followed, detailing the history of the struggle, current intelligence about what was happening on the ground, the state of the negotiations, the U.S. position on the issues, and background on the HDC.

Zinni followed up on that by reading everything he could find on Aceh online and from local bookstores and libraries. He was surprised at the amount of information that was out there:

Indonesia is unique among nations. For one thing, it’s big. It spreads across thousands of islands, some of them among the largest in the world, that cover thousands of miles from east to west and many time zones. It’s extremely diverse in geography, population, and ethnic identity. In religion it’s predominantly Muslim (usually of a moderate kind), but there are also many Buddhists. All of these factors would make the country very difficult to govern; but add to that corruption, dictatorships, all kinds of divisive political issues, and a blanketing atmosphere of turmoil; and further add to that internal struggles with provinces in distant parts of the country—like East Timor (now independent), Papua New Guinea, and Aceh—that want to break away and gain independence; and you have a nation that’s never far from catastrophic fission.