The Mostar Puzzle

Just as the hoopla over the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic has started to simmer down, news that the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic had decided to break his five-year-long oath of silence, has reverberated sensationally. Karadzic, who after the Dayton Accord withdrew from state and party top positions, hasn’t spoken to journalists since May 1996, but has suddenly, allegedly, decided to open up his soul to the obscure BiH Danas weekly from Mostar, and via that weekly not only to confirm his resolve not to surrender alive to the hated aggressors but also to pronounce a number of serious accusation aimed at the former and current Belgrade governments.

In the lengthy interview, which the BiH Danas journalist claims he got after complicated negotiations and a long drive over Herzegovina’s rocky terrain during which he was blindfolded, Karadzic says that Milosevic had betrayed Krajina and Republika Srpska, and that after him “people without character” came to power. Karadzic, however, admits that president Vojislav Kostunica is a “great and honest Serb”, and adds that the FRY president is being “blackmailed” by the odious foreigners and domestic traitors, so that there is nothing left for him to do than to succumb to their dictate. The thing that seems most bizarre is Karadzic’s alleged claim that in his “splendid isolation” he is completing his autobiography Radovan and Serbia for which an unidentified foreign publisher had already paid a hefty advance payment, and that he hopes to win a Nobel prize after this capital work has been published. 

DOUBTS: Karadzic’s interview would have without doubt reverberated even more sensationally if it wasn’t published in a weekly with a very small circulation which hardly anyone ever heard of outside of west Herzegovina. Actually, it might have passed unnoticed if, with a two-week delay, one British tabloid didn’t quote it after which, thanks to news agencies, it reached even serious newspapers, amongst them the Belgrade press.

However, people who know something about Karadzic’s current situation have been claiming from the very beginning that the interview was simply fabricated. “Until now, Karadzic has persistently refused a string of interview demands from the most powerful international media houses, which often accompanied such demands with a lot of money for an exclusive”, says Karadzic’s close friend for VREME, who is constantly in contact with the former president. “Therefore, the very thought that he would now grant some Ustashi an interview is ridiculous.” Our source adds that Karadzic is perfectly aware that no publicity at this moment would work to his advantage because it would only increase the chances for his arrest. Recently, namely, Karadzic was forced to cut his bodyguards by half since his money is running out, and the separation from his family and the constant moving from one safe house into another is becoming more and more difficult for him to bear. “He sleeps during the day, and he spends his nights writing and reading”, says our interlocutor, with an explanation that he’s not speaking about a biography in its making, but about letters of a “private and political nature”. Namely, in fear of the Americans and their listening devices, the former president doesn’t dare use the phone and other electronic means of communication, and remains in touch with his friends and political allies almost exclusively with letters.

If this alleged interview is viewed in context of the most recent political events in west Herzegovina, the affair becomes less strange. Namely, at this moment there is an ongoing general rebellion of Herzegovina’s Croats who, having been deprived of their support from Zagreb, in a desperate attempt decided to annul the Dayton Accords via a plebiscite and to establish their own entity. Faced with such a challenge, the high international representative for Bosnia Wolfgang Petrisch ordered a raid of the international police force on the Herzegovina bank which was supposed to finance that project. That’s how Herzegovina’s Croats were left without some 60 million marks for wages and expenses of “state employees”, which seriously threatened their project. In the situation in which they found themselves, any ally would be more than welcome, even a fabricated one. Anyway, with Karadzic they used to collaborate during the war for business purposes in the sense of plundering Bosnia and circulating strategic materials, from oil to tanks. BiH Danas weekly is known as an outlet of the most hardlined wing of Bosnia’s HDZ, which makes it understandable why this “bait” was placed there.

LAMENTING OVER RADOVAN: That’s how, most probably against his will, Karadzic found himself in the spotlight which could seriously harm him. Ever since Slobodan Milosevic has landed in jail and the question of his removal to The Hague has become an issue of negotiations between Belgrade and the tribunal, the question of the two remaining “crown jewels” which Carla del Ponte would like to see behind bars before her mandate  expires naturally follows: Karadzic and Mladic. Due to a number of political and practical reasons, which deserve to be a topic of a special text, Ratko Mladic doesn’t have to seriously worry about an arrest for now. Karadzic’s situation, however, is gradually worsening ever since he went undercover: one by one, his friends are disappearing from the scene or are turning their backs on him, and signs are appearing that the silent agreement which provided him with relative security in exchange for his withdrawal from public life, seems to be expiring. A clear sign in that sense arrived these days from a main actor of that agreement, the former Balkans envoy and not meant to be secretary of state Richard Holbrooke. In a column for the New York Times last week, Holbrooke severely criticized the current Bush administration for its signal that the US could bring a stop to the presence of its peacekeeping troops in the Balkans. The main point of Holbrooke’s criticism, however, is Pentagon’s unreadiness to become involved in arresting Karadzic. “It is ironic that American military leaders, who would get a lot out of Mr. Karadzic’s arrest since that would quicken the withdrawal of American soldiers – are offering the most resistance to the arrest”, says Holbrooke and cites that that resistance is “one of the things which saddened him most in the policies of the West after Dayton”.

That’s how Karadzic, apart from having lived to see the Croats laying claims on him, has also become a bone of contention between the former and current US administrations. All of that increases the chances that he will find himself in the company of his former friends Biljana Plavsic and Momcilo Krajisnik by the end of this year, who are expected to seriously compromise both Karadzic and Milosevic at the upcoming trial at The Hague. Too bad about the Nobel committee, which shall have to choose between less interesting candidates.