News Feature, Terence Sheridan,
Pacific News Service, Feb 10, 2003
Yugoslavia's latest reincarnation -- a new country called "Serbia
and Montenegro" -- just got marching orders from the United States: Capture an
insane, brutal and indicted war criminal or lose valuable aid.
BELGRADE, Serbia and Montenegro--The world's newest nation has its
marching orders. The United States has threatened to cut off millions in aid
money to the remnants of former Yugoslavia -- the last and least-lamented of
three Yugoslavias since 1929, just renamed "Serbia and Montenegro" -- if a
Bosnian Serb general is not arrested soon.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, U.S.
ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, recently told Belgrade authorities to
have Gen. Ratko Mladic, an indicted war criminal, in custody by March 31 or
prepare to lose aid that could total $100 million.
"With its war on
terrorism underway and war with Iraq looming, America is eager to wrap up its
business in the Balkans," said a high-ranking Serbian
official.
Nevertheless, even though cash-strapped Serbia desperately
needs the aid money -- not to mention backing from the superpower before it is
granted vital help from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank --
Serbs continue to resist turning in a fellow Serb, no matter how vile the
alleged crimes.
During a talk show on state television in early February,
viewers were asked, "Are you in favor of extraditing Mladic as a condition for
reintegration into Europe?" Only 995 callers said "yes"; 9,787 responded
"no."
For years, Mladic has more or less "hidden" in plain sight, living
in Belgrade and traveling at will in Serbia -- in contrast to his former boss
and fellow fugitive, the elusive Radovan Karadzic, psychiatrist, poet and
politician. Karadzic maintains a low profile in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian
Serb entity that constitutes 49 percent of Bosnia.
At one time, Mladic
commanded forces that controlled 70 percent of the territory of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, which besieged Sarajevo, operated concentration camps and
allegedly massacred about 7,000 Muslim men and boys in eastern Bosnia. Indicted
in 1994 and 1995, he faces life in prison if convicted on charges of crimes
against humanity and genocide during a brutish civil war that pitted Serbs
against Muslims and Croats from 1992 to 1995.
Tales of the ferocity of
the stocky man with a slight potbelly, ice-blue eyes and a razor-thin smile are
well known here. When one of Mladic's artillery officers requested radio
confirmation of an order to destroy a section of Sarajevo, Mladic snapped, "Burn
it down!"
In the summer of 1995, after his troops overran Srebrenica, a
United Nations "safe zone" packed with refugees and guarded by a cowed Dutch
battalion, Mladic's forces immediately moved on to the nearby hill town of Zepa.
There, Mladic reportedly told petrified Muslims to look neither to the United
Nations nor Allah to save them.
"I am your God," he said.
In
Srebrenica he was filmed strutting through town and ordering a street sign with
a Muslim name torn down, while his men handed out candy to children and
cigarettes to adults.
"Srebrenica is my gift to the Serbian people," he
crowed.
After promising Srebrenica Muslims that no harm would come to
them, thousands of men and boys were herded onto buses and trucks that took them
to killing fields in eastern Bosnia. They were shot in groups of 10 or more and
buried in mass graves, a United Nations' criminal tribunal charges.
A
Dutch soldier recalled that men were crying and that one screamed, "Don't you
see what they are doing? They are going to kill all of us!"
More than
2,000 bodies -- some with hands bound behind their backs -- have been exhumed.
The search for bodies continues. It was the worst atrocity in Europe since
Hitler.
Slobodan Milosevic himself -- the Serbs' one-time supreme leader
who had personally confirmed Mladic as military commander of the Bosnian Serbs
and who is presently on trial for war crimes and genocide in the Netherlands --
described the uncontrollable Mladic as being "clinically mad," according to
President Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke.
So
far, Mladic has benefited from a state in turmoil -- a battered Serbia that
survived a 12-year reign by Milosevic and a 78-day bombing campaign by NATO --
and now lives in penury as Milosevic's democratic successors engage in
disruptive infighting over political spoils.
Many Serbs see Mladic and
Karadzic as heroes who fought against common enemies, the Muslims and Croats.
T-shirts with their faces on them still sell in Belgrade, capital of the renamed
nation.
Even destitute Serbs who despise the fugitives and deplore their
war crimes have not turned them in for the $5 million U.S. bounties on their
heads. That would be considered treachery in a country where some continue to
deny that Serbs, valiant fighters in two world wars, were victimizers. Where
some feel that Milosevic and the Americans, not Mladic, are the real villains --
Milosevic for ruining them and the Americans for bombing them.
"Mladic is
now lying low," says the high-ranking Serbian official who was in contact with
Ambassador Prosper. "Last rumors had him in Western Serbia."
The official
says one problem is finding a police unit to hunt for Mladic that didn't dirty
its hands in Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo.
"In the end, it will probably
take a Serb to catch a Serb," he says.
PNS contributor Terence
Sheridan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), a former reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has
been living and writing in the former Yugoslavia for the last nine
years.
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User comments
| Milena Kosovcic | Feb 12, 2003 11:00:04 |
| You have double
standards! When you start to have the same treatment for the all war criminals from the CIVIL WAR in ex Yugoslavia, then you can expect help from Serbian people to get rid of Mladic and Karadzic. As long as you avoid pointing the same kind of people from the other sides (Croatia and Bosnia) you can expect nothing. For each war we need to have two sides. For this one we had four (Serbs, Albanians, Croat and Bosnians), not ordinary people, of course, but politicians. If you don’t want to clean the rubbish from each side don’t expect from one side to believe that you did bombing for better things in the region. Today in Serbia and Montenegro you have Croats, Albanians, Muslims, Slovaks and Serbs and there is no problem. -- edited by the publisher. | |
