Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans

Introduction

1 He was good with children, the news stories said. He helped “cure” an autistic child through bioenergy. He gave excellent massages. He practiced an ancient Christian Orthodox method of “silencing,” a form of meditation. He had an attractive middle-aged mistress. He had a long white beard and long white hair. He was mysterious and spiritual and had a soothing manner about him. He was a poet. He wrote for Healthy Life magazine. His name was Dragan Dabić, and he was a holistic healer. Only he wasn’t. He was Radovan Karadžić, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against non-Serb populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992–95 war. Radovan Karadžić was arrested on a Belgrade commuter bus in July 2008 after thirteen years in hiding. His arrest was sudden and surprising and came only a few weeks after the new, reformist government had come to power in Serbia. And while the Serbian press devoted hundreds of stories to his bizarre disguise and to his mistress, friends, neighbors, and favorite Belgrade bars, the Serbian government looked at Karadžić and saw the country’s ticket to the European Union (EU). Suddenly the doors to Europe could open for a country shunned for years because of its reluctance to apprehend war-crimes suspects. The Serbian government wasted no time in placing Karadžić’s arrest in the context of Serbia’s European aspirations. The arrest was a sign that the Serbian government had a “very ambitious European agenda,” Serbia’s foreign minister Introduction THE IMPORTANCE OF DEALING WITH THE PAST 2 HIJACKED JUSTICE proudly announced, adding,“We want to be an EU member.”1 “[Serbs] see their manifest destiny in Europe,” was an often-heard refrain in the Serbian press following the arrest.2 “Karadžić’s arrest is a great step towards European integration ,” Serbia’s defense minister said.3 But the Serbian government used Karadžić’s arrest to make an even larger political point. If Serbia respected international law by cooperating with the ICTY, the international community should respect it as well, by siding with Serbia ’s claim that Kosovo should remain part of Serbia,based on international rules of sovereignty and territorial integrity.4 Serbia’s prime minister Mirko Cvetković made this link very clear: “Serbia respects international law in every respect, whether the issue is cooperation with The Hague or acting against Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence.”5 The European Union also reaped immediate political benefits from Karadžić’s arrest. European officials boasted that the arrest was the result of sustained European pressures on Serbia.“This is a big success for Europe,”French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner proclaimed.6 It was seen as a triumph of the European Union’s enlargement strategy and its clever use of “soft power.”7 What was missing amid all the self-congratulation of politicians from Belgrade to Brussels to Washington was the substantive moral dimension of why Karadžić was accused of genocide in the first place, what his role was in the killing , and what implications for truth, justice, and reconciliation his arrest would have in the region. Although the Serbian media provided wall-to-wall coverage of the most bizarre tabloid details of his years in refuge, a startlingly few news stories spent any time at all on the content of the Hague indictments, or even more generally on the crimes he was accused of masterminding in Bosnia.8 It is on these crimes that we should focus our attention. 1. B92 (Belgrade-based broadcast network), July 22, 2008, http://www.b92.net. 2. Ljiljana Smajlović, editor of the leading Belgrade daily newspaper Politika, quoted in Dan Bilefsky, “Karadžić Arrest Is Big Step for a Land Tired of Being Europe’s Pariah,” New York Times, July 23, 2008. 3. B92, July 22, 2008. 4. B92, August 2, 2008. Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, unilaterally declared independence in February 2008. Serbia has vigorously opposed Kosovo’s independence, claiming it is in violation of international law. 5. B92, July 26, 2008. 6. Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger, “With Karadžić’s Arrest, Europe Sees Triumph,” New York Times, July 23, 2008. 7. “Karadžić Caught,” Economist, July 24, 2008; “Karadžić in The Hague a Victory for EU Values,” Radio Free Europe, July 30, 2008; “Karadžić’s Arrest Hailed as Victory for...