(1)It would indeed be a “sad day in court” if establishment of the rule of
law in parts of ex-Yugoslavia depended on the arrest and successful prosecution
of two prominent Serb individuals, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko
Mladic. In so far as the criminal justice is concerned both the First and
Second Yugoslavia did have the rule of law. It collapsed
when Nazi Germany occupied all of its component parts except Croatia (then
rewarded with independence for siding with Germany). After
reinstatement,it fell apart again when Western Powers including, this
time, the United States, went into an undeclared war against the Serbs in
Bosnia, later at Kosovo and finally “inner Serbia” as well. This time around, in
the process of New Balkanization, both the Croat and Muslim sides in Bosnia and
at Kosovo were favored as “allies” of NATO against the Serbs. The
Tribunal at the Hague reflected this fact of life. In a tripartite
civil war, with hardly any local saints, it failed to indict
even a single Croat and /or Muslim in its first two years of operation. This
“judicial asymmetry” reappears in Carla del Ponte’s text (NYT-OP-ED,28.06.03).
There should be an equal effort to arrest and prosecute the Albanian General
Agim Ceku, who led the “ethnic cleansing” of some 200,000 Serbs from Krajina
(August 1995). The same principle applies to the Bosnian Mulim War Lord of
Srebrenica, Nasir Oric who showed to at least two Western
journalists video tapes of his own crimes in Srebrenica’s
countryside, inhabited entirely by the Orthodox Christian Serbs.
(2)Equally dubious is CDP’s claim that failure to apprehend Karadzic and
Mladic would send the wrong signal to potential war criminals anywhere. Real
mass graves were filled-up with thousands of bodies in Iraq
WHILE the Hague Tribunal was indicting, prosecuting and demanding arrests
of (mainly) Serb culprits. The Albanian General Agim Ceku is TODAY the
head of Kosovo Police Force. Under the UN Auspices this “police” is
implicated in the continuous efforts of Albanian extremists to ethnically
“cleanse” Kosovo of all non-Muslim Albanians. Nasir Oric was, until recently ,
running a Disco for U.S. soldiers in Tuzla. Both men have been under an American
Protectorate in respect to the Hague Tribunal’ “mission.” If the “raison d’etat”
is applied NOT to go after those Muslim “order givers” in Bosnia and
in Kosovo why does it not apply to their positional analogues on the Serb
side? An excursion through the records of the past would
convince most people that we seldom really learn from history. A world
devoid of wars and organized terrorism can only come about over a long
period of time and profound changes in human nature and the ways in which
we tend to think
(3) Del Ponte’s observation that the media have lost interest in the
Balkans is commonplace but it explains in part why she has gone to the New
York Times. It is unrealistic to imagine that all those, whose excellent
incomes and perks are connected with a working Hague Tribunal for Yugoslavia,
would really like to give it all up and go home. Del Ponte’s own income and
perks as Chief Prosecutor at the Tribunal exceed by far what she was able to
earn in her native Switzerland. She is obviously frustrated by her repeated
failures to “get” Karadzic and Mladic. With the trial of Slobodan
Milosevic lasting almost two years now, the Tribunal needs more of the
“Big Fish” to argue for yet another extension of its operational term.
Raymond K.Kent
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510/642-1971)
