<http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/harry_de_quetteville/blog/2008/08/06/karadzic_ in_the_hague_the_balkan_blame_game> http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/harry_de_quetteville/blog/2008/08/06/karadzic_i n_the_hague_the_balkan_blame_game
HARRY DE QUETTEVILLE IN BERLIN Karadzic in The Hague: The Balkan blame game Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 12:58 PM GMT [ <http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/harry_de_quetteville/blog/cat/general> General] With Radovan Karadzic in The Hague, a new round is about to open in the Balkan Blame Game. Some view Radovan Karadzic, on trial for war crimes, as a hero As <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/04/bbc.balkans?gusrc=rss&feed=medi a> Michael Palin is finding out, just attempting to apportion blame for the wars of the 1990s is excruciatingly sensitive work, and he has just been rapped on the knuckles by the BBC for "over-simplifying" the issues in his <http://www.bbc.co.uk/palin/> latest television series. He was talking about the famous Mostar bridge, in Bosnia, which was <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTZYw9HgJBI&feature=related> blown up ethnic Croats in 1993. As far as I can gather, he was trying to use the bridge ( <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bosnia/1467740/Prince-watc hes-post-war-Bosnia-mend-its-bridges.html> now replaced by a sensational reconstruction - I was there on the night it was unveiled and remember a <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwRnim_eDeM> host of swimmers bearing flares swallow diving from it into the waters of the Neretva river below) to underline that Serbs weren't to blame for everything in the wars. Serbs often feel that is how the world views it, and how the history books will tell it from now on. The arrest and extradition of Radovan Karadzic to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague is the latest episode in what many Serbs feel is a calculated process of humiliation, in a courtroom that convicts only Serbs while releasing Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and ethnic Albanian Kosovars. >From the outside Karadzic's case may seem open and shut. Wasn't he the architect of Srebrenica, we say? That's not how all Serbs feel. But how can a man charged with genocide by some be viewed as a hero by others? The real reason is that in a conflict where three major ethnic groupings dispersed across what were to become three new states (Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia) campaigns of ethnic cleansing were portrayed not as acts of aggression, but as acts of defence. So it is that Karadzic claimed he was defending the ethnic Serbs, Orthodox Christians, from a Bosnian Muslim onslaught. And so yesterday, did Croatia celebrate the anniversary of Operation Storm, in which its forces took huge swathes of the country from ethnic Serbs, leaving hundreds dead. Hundreds of thousands of other Serbs fled Croatia and Ante Gotovina, the Croatian lieutenant general in charge is now himself at the Hague accused of war crimes. Back in Croatia, EU candidate, there is no doubt he is a hero. There, August 5th, the anniversary of the offensive, is now officially "The Day of Gratitude to Homeland Defenders". On Monday Croatia's prime minister Ivo Sanader, called Operation Storm “a justified and legitimate operation”. That's not quite how the ICTY sees it. Ante Gotovina, it notes was "Commander of the Split Military District of the Croatian Army (HV) from 9 October 1992 to March 1996; overall operations Commander of part of "Operation Storm", a military offensive launched by Croatia with the objective of re-taking the Krajina region". Its indictment accuses him of "persecutions, deportation, inhumane acts (forcible transfer), plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, murder, inhumane acts, cruel treatment". In Belgrade, from where Karadzic was so controversially handed over, Serb president Boris Tadic, wants Croatia to admit that it behaved brutally in the Balkan wars too. “Serbia grieves about Storm as a day of immense sorrow and a calamity and expects an apology from Croatia,” he said on Sunday. But Croatian President Stjepan Mesic isn't feeling apologetic at all, issuing a tart rejoinder that Belgrade was the very city where, "tanks decorated with flowers set off for Croatia". The fact is, that when Serbs feel they are painted as the villains in the Balkan wars, they are right. They are perhaps unlucky that as Europe observed a series of complex multi-ethnic conflicts, mired in centuries of history, it became inevitable that many would seek to identify a simple aggressor - and that role was allotted them. But there is one other unfortunate truth for Serbs. As a source at the Hague tribunal told me last week: "The tribunal was never mandated to try everyone, but some of the worst crimes, and it's a simple fact that some of the worst crimes - like Srebrenica and mass rapes in Bosnia - were committed by Serbs." __,_._,___
