Leadership Quote by John Pomfret

There is a particular species of frontline pride that only makes sense in a place like Bosnia: if everyone hates you at some point, you might be getting it right. Pomfret’s line turns the usual performance metric on its head. Instead of chasing approval, he treats hostility as a diagnostic tool, a grim little compass needle pointing toward balance in an environment designed to drag outsiders into someone’s narrative.

The intent is both defensive and quietly accusatory. Defensive, because war reporting and diplomacy alike are routinely attacked as biased; Pomfret preemptively answers the charge by presenting symmetrical backlash as proof of integrity. Accusatory, because it implies the factions weren’t merely disagreeing in good faith - they were policing the story, testing how much pressure it takes to bend an intermediary or journalist into becoming an asset.

The subtext is about the information war inside the war. Bosnia in the 1990s wasn’t just a battlefield of artillery and sieges; it was a battle over legitimacy, victimhood, and international attention. “Came down very hard” suggests not casual criticism but coordinated attempts to intimidate, discredit, or manipulate - the standard toolkit when optics matter as much as territory.

It works as a quote because it’s blunt and paradoxical: the “right job” is confirmed not by praise but by collective antagonism. There’s a weary professionalism in that inversion, the kind that acknowledges moral clarity is rare in civil conflict, and that the closest thing to credibility may be surviving everyone’s attempt to claim you.