Victors justice

Serbia: Karadzic has been arrested on war crimes charges, but the illegitimate political decisions that caused the Bosnian war have been ignored.

The arrest of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic by the Serbian authorities in late July and his subsequent deportation to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague to stand trial for alleged war crimes has once again put the spotlight on the Balkans. Violence erupted in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and other cities when news of his dramatic arrest was made public. During his brief appearance before the trial court at The Hague International War Crimes Tribunal, Karadzic said that his arrest was made many days before it was announced officially. There is speculation that he was caught in a joint operation by the Serb Special Forces operating directly under the presidency and Western intelligence operatives.

For many Serbs, Karadzic is still a war-time hero. The Serbian Radical Party, which fell just short of an outright majority in the general elections held earlier in the year and which now sits in the opposition, has strongly criticised the governments decision to hand over Karadzic to the ICTY. Vojislav Kostunica, who was the Prime Minister of the country until the new coalition took over after the May elections, has also protested strongly against the governments move. The new governments survival depends to a large extent on the support of the Socialist Party, which was once headed by former President Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic, who was extradited to The Hague to face war crimes charges, died two years ago before the court could deliver its judgment. The Socialist Party is now trying to reinvent itself as a pro-Western left-wing party. The Serbian Interior Minister, Ivica Dacic, who belongs to the party, said his Ministry did not have anything to do with the arrest of Karadzic. But the party, in a statement, emphasised that cooperation with the Hague Tribunal is Serbias international obligation.

Karadzic, along with the Bosnian Serb general Radco Mladic, has been on the War Crimes Tribunals most wanted list since the three-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina ended in 1995. Karadzic has been accused by the West of masterminding the war in Bosnia. The West has put most of the blame for the siege of Sarajevo and the genocide in Srebrenica on Karadzic and Mladic. Many observers of the Balkan scene feel that the killings and the ethnic cleansing, which took place in Srebrenica and surrounding areas, were also because of the failure of the international peacekeeping forces stationed there at the time. The European Union (E.U.) had made Serbias membership in it conditional on the handover of the two fugitives. The new Serbian government was expecting immediate rewards from Brussels for the handover of Karadzic, but with Mladic still remaining elusive, the E.U. has signalled that full accession talks and financial rewards will have to wait until he, too, is handed over.

Karadzic was living openly, albeit under an assumed identity, in Belgrade for the past many years. Both he and Mladic would have had some sort of patronage from the state machinery. Many sectors of the government are not yet reconciled to the governments volte-face on issues relating to sovereignty and foreign policy. The decision by the West to detach Kosovo from Serbia is still a very emotive issue. More than 100,000 Serbs had congregated in Belgrade to stage violent protests against Kosovos declaration of independence.

The Serbian elite are, however, determined to see that their country joins the E.U. Many of the former states that made up the Yugoslav Federation are already full-fledged E.U. members. The Serbian elite view E.U. membership as a short-cut to prosperity after decades of war and suffering. It was the promise of E.U. membership that convinced many Serb voters to vote for the pro-Western leader Boris Tadic in the presidential elections and for pro-Western parties in the general elections in May this year. According to opinion polls, more than 68 per cent of the people want Serbia to be part of the E.U.

Karadzic was arrested within weeks of the formation of the new government. The West wants to retain Serbia as an ally because the country is the economic engine of the Balkans. PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently rated Serbia as the third most attractive investment destination among developing economies.

There is, however, also a strong nationalist tendency in the country, which was reflected in the strong support for the Serbian Radical Party in the recent elections. The leader of the Radical Party himself is incarcerated in a prison in The Hague, facing charges of war crimes. The party wants stronger links with Russia. Both countries share religious, cultural and linguistic bonds.

A leader of the party said that Karadzics arrest and deportation to The Hague would have serious consequences for the government in Belgrade. We believe this is one of the worst acts of the current marionette, puppet government, said Dragan Todrovic, one of the senior leaders of the party.

The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-95) had pitted the Serbs, the Croats and the Bosnian Serbs against one another. With the Yugoslav Federation unravelling, all the three communities were scrambling for territory and ethnic purges were the order of the day. Karadzic and Mladic have to answer for many of the atrocities that took place during the Bosnian war, but so do the leaders of Bosnian Croats and Muslims. The Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, who went on to become the President of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, died peacefully in office. No charges of war crimes or genocide were brought against him though the Serbs and many independent commentators accuse him of war crimes.

Before the Bosnian issue became a cause-celebre of the West, jihadists from Asia and Africa had converged on the region to help the cause of the Bosnian Muslims. The first President of the Croat Republic, Franjo Tudjman, also played a key role in the conflagration that claimed the lives of many citizens in the former Yugoslav Federation. But he, too, went scot-free and died peacefully in bed.

According to chroniclers of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Karadzic actually tried to negotiate peace deals with the Bosnian Muslims. Izetbegovic sabotaged the first attempt for partisan ends. The deal envisaged the partition of Bosnia into three parts Serb, Muslim and Croat. Some Bosnian Muslim military leaders went ahead and signed separate deals with the Bosnian Serbs.

In March 1992, Karadzic and Izetbegovic actually signed a deal, with all the three groups agreeing to share power. The American Ambassador in Belgrade at the time prevailed over the Bosnian Muslim leadership to renege on the deal. By 1994, the Americans had decided to support a Muslim-Croat alliance against the Serbs. Washington had decided to be in the drivers seat in the Balkans, edging out the European powers.

The United States started the precedent of pre-emptive interventions with Bosnia, unmindful of legal niceties such as national sovereignty. The later American military interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq should be viewed in this context.

Western politicians have accused Karadzic of committing atrocities on a gargantuan scale and acting in tandem with Milosevic. It is well known that the two leaders never got along well and that Karadzic never took his orders from Milosevic. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served during the second term of President Bill Clinton, has said that Karadzic was behind the systematic ethnic cleansing murder of several hundred thousand Bosnians. In actual fact, there were fewer than 100,000 killed on all sides during the Bosnian civil war.

According to Karadzics written statement to the Hague Tribunal, Richard Holbrook, who was President Clintons point man in the Balkans in the 1990s, had promised him a peaceful retired life if he withdrew from politics. The Serbian newspaper Blic has quoted unnamed U.S. security officials as saying that Karadzic was given a verbal assurance from the highest levels of the U.S. government about his well-being provided he kept a low profile. According to the report, the American intelligence agencies withdrew this informal protection after they found out that he continued to exert influence on the Bosnian Serb Party, which runs the Serb-dominated part of Bosnia.

Holbrook, who negotiated the Dayton peace accords of 1995 which ended the Bosnian civil war, has described Karadzic as one of the worst men in the world and the Osama bin Laden of Europe. Osamas sympathies were definitely not with the Serbian nationalists who had become hate figures in the Islamic world in the early 1990s. In an interview in 2001, Holbrook said that the Bosnian Muslim cause would not have survived without help from Al Qaeda militants.

Up to 3,000 Arab militants had come to Bosnia to fight alongside their Muslim brethren from 1990 to 1995. Most of them were veterans of the Afghan war. Some of them settled down in Bosnia. The West is now exerting pressure on the Bosnian government to expel them. In 1993 and 1994, the Clinton administration had given the green signal to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey and radical Islamic charities to arm Bosnian Muslims.

Karadzic, like Milosevic, has said that he would defend himself at the Hague Tribunal. He will no doubt shed more light on the behind-the-scenes activities that led to the Dayton accords and the creation of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Clinton administration had made several concessions, both written and verbal, to Serb leaders such as Milosevic and Karadzic to make them agree to a peace accord and the secession of Bosnia from the Yugoslav Federation.

Smdja Trifkovic, an American commentator and an expert on the Balkans, wrote after the arrest of Karadzic that the Bosnian Serb leader will be duly convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity and he will not come out of the jail alive. The verdict is already written but it contains a fundamental imbalance. It ignores the essence of the Bosnian war the Serbs striving into not being forced into secession while remaining mute about the culpability of the other two sides for a series of unconstitutional, illegal and illegitimate political decisions that caused the war.