Three Man in a Boat...

When Richard Goldston, the chief prosecutor at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague announced on June 25, 1995 the list of twenty-four people against who will be charged, few were surprised to find Dr. Radovan Karadzic, president of the Srpska Republic, and Lieutenant General Ratko Mladic, head of the Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army, on the top of the list. It had been hinted some time ago that the two were under investigation which was unlikely to be a lengthy one. Both are accused of crimes belonging to all four categories with which the tribunal deals (genocide, crimes against humanity, breach of the laws and customs of war and serious breaches of the Geneva Convention). In short, Goldston accused them of crimes committed by Serb military and civilian authorities since the beginning of the war: systematic persecution of civilians belonging to particular ethnic groups with the intention of destroying those groups, unselective shelling, destruction of towns and villages, mass murders, rape, taking people into "collection camps", looting...

Third on Goldston's list, Mile Martic, the president of Krajina, got away with "only" the accusation of breach of laws and customs of war, regarding the attack on the center of Zagreb in May this year which left 11 people dead and a hundred or so wounded. In Martic's case there is no need to apply the doctrine of "supreme authority" : Martic himself admitted on several occasions that he personally ordered the shelling "in retaliation" for the Croatian offensive in Western Slavonija.

Considering that the charges were not unexpected, the reactions of Serbian political media were predictable though surprisingly phlegmatic: apart from "Nasa Borba", which placed the news from the Hague on its front page, most daily papers reported the story in a very conspicuous manner. Public opinion on this question could roughly be divided into three categories: "legitimists", "pragmatists" and "balancers". All three categories have objections about Goldston's list, but for different reasons. The "legitimists" include the ultra-nationalists who argue unanimously that the Hague tribunal is not legitimate and thus has no right to try anyone, not even the Serbs. The legitimacy of the tribunal is disputed for three reasons: legal ("the security council as an executive body has not the legislative power required to form this tribunal", Dr. Smilja Avramov), eschatological ("Martic, Mladic and Karadzic can not be placed on the list of war criminals because they organized their people in order to prevent another genocide over the Serbs"- Radmilo Bogdanovic SPS) and solipsic ("as far as I am concerned, that tribunal does not exist"- Milorad Vucelic- SPS). All of them, consciously or unconsciously, quote the famous defence used by Josip Broz Tito during the "Trial of the Bombers" at which he was one of the accused: "I do not acknowledge this court" and also, just in case, quote the provision from the Constitution which forbids the extradition of citizens of FRY.

"Balancers", who are more numerous than others, in principle have nothing against the court, but do not like the fact that all of the accused are Serbs. As Slobodan Vuksanovic, Democratic Party spokesman, said: "It is unbelievable that there are no guilty on the Muslim and Croatian side, and that only Serbs are savages who do not respect international treaties and conventions". Vuk Draskovic expressed a similar view, according to which "Tudjman and Izetbegovic are missing from the list". The "balancers" it seems would be most content if Goldston charged the same number of Serbs, Croats and Muslims, preferably for similar crimes (as was done in Bosnia in the Communist era: every political felony required the same number of accused from each ethnic group). What is surprising is that among the "balancers" there is a substantial number of those who otherwise support the view that this kind of judicial levelling is evidence that the former Bosnian state had to collapse because it was not built on good principles.

The last group are the "Pragmatists" who have no objections about the court, or the list, but are worried that charges against some of the main actors of the Bosnian drama will have a detrimental effect on the negotiating process. Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the Democratic Party (DS), expressed the typical position of this group: the charges brought against Karadzic and Mladic "have the purpose of pushing one side further away from the negotiating table, without any idea about who could be brought as a replacement". Nebojsa Lekovic from New Democracy (ND) says: "You can not judge about either teams while the match is still being played". According to Lekovic " the judgment of history is best", something most thiefs and crooks would agree with.

In principle, these arguments are without any basis. It is true that the Tribunal was formed without the proposal going through the General Assembly of the United Nations (the statute says that it was because of "the necessity to establish the Tribunal as soon as possible") . It is also true that, both on this and other occasions, Goldston gave priority to crimes committed by the Serbs- Vuk Draskovic is probably not entirely right when claiming that Tudjman and Izetbegovic are missing from the list, because in that case their Serbian counterpart should also be added, but there are no convincing reasons why Mate Boban (for the Drina valley), Darije Kordic (for Central Bosnia) or Anto Rosa (for Mostar and the Old Bridge), Tomislav Mercep (for Gospic, the Zec family, Pakrac fields, etc), Hasan Delic (the commander of the Celebic prison camp) and many others can not be found amongst the accused.

Goldston argued that the information about crimes against the Serbs is hard to obtain because the Serbian side refuses to cooperate with the Tribunal (most of the members of the Yugoslav Commission for the investigation of war crimes are "legitimist" hard-liners), though it is also true that some of the crimes against the Serbs were investigated with sufficient scrutiny by non- governmental humanitarian organizations, as well as that the doctrine of "supreme authority" could be applied anyway.

Antonio Kaseras, the chairman of the Tribunal, gave the "pragmatists" their strongest argument when he told Reuter that "charges against Radovan Karadzic will make it impossible for the Bosnian Serb leader to continue negotiation with the West" and that he "would like to see who will sit at the negotiating table with someone accused of genocide". Kaseras thus disqualified himself as a lawyer: his was appointed to judge, and not to decide who will negotiate with whom.

In fact, the consequence of the charges being brought against Karadzic and Martic will be less drastic than it appears. Karadzic is a moral and political pariah anyway, classed together with Abu Abas and the leader of Hezbolah somewhere below the Italian "Mafiosi" and the Colombian cocaine bosses- since the Contact Group plan was rejected only those who had no other option negotiated with him, and nobody is likely to be deeply moved by the fact that he will never again see the icy Geneva lake or visit any of the Swiss casinos.

From now on Mladic's and Martic's visits to Belgrade will have to be more discrete, otherwise Yugoslavia risks new sanctions; in addition it gives Milosevic an elegant excuse to stay away from both, which in Martic's case he may even be happy to do. UNPROFOR will continue to talk to all three leaders of the warring factions: only the UN Civil Police (UNCIVPOL) in Bosnia and Croatia will have to be careful to avoid contact with the trio who have the "supreme authority", because due to an awkward formulation of their mandate they would be obliged to try to arrest them.

That's about all. Instead of all the rhetoric about legitimacy, (im)partiality and advantages of the Hague Tribunal, it might be worth looking into what each of the three Serbian states did so far on the question war crimes. Criminal law statute books in all Serbian states (FRY, Krajina Republic and Srpska Republic) sanction exactly the same crimes as the Tribunal, governed by provisions of international law. In Serbia, two years after the event , those responsible for kidnapping a group of passengers from the Strpci railway station have still not been captured; the trial of Vojin and Dusan Vuckovic accused of the slaughter of Muslims in Celopek, which began last year was postponed indefinitely because "the judge is on sick leave", while in the mean time all court records disappeared. This year in Beli Manastir a Serb accused of killing Croats and Hungarians at their homes was found guilty and sentenced, and this appears to be the only case of this kind so far. In the Srpska Republic it appears that it is impossible to try a Serb for any crime against a Muslim or Croat irrespective of the conditions surrounding the crime: a good example is Prijedor where last year, in one day, 17 Muslims were murdered for no apparent reason. Karadzic was quick to promise an inquiry, put it never happened. Even the Bosnian and Croat authorities have shown greater readiness to, at least formally, get rid of criminals either through liquidation ( individuals called Cac, Cel and Prazin in Sarajevo last year) or by marginalizing their political influence (e.g. Boban, Praljak). As far as the Serbs are concerned, in fifty years from now we will probably still be having bitter arguments about whether Karadzic was a hero or a criminal, in anticipation of the Judgment Day and divine justice.