Radovan Karadžić arrest: Not justice, but politics

Hiding on stage

He was captured on Bus 83 from New Belgrade to Brussels, a bespectacled man with a wild, gray mane. Serb authorities had kept him under surveillance for weeks, waiting for the right opening and the least resistance. And after a decade-long search, Radovan Karadžić, sought for his leadership in the brutal ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, had been arrested.

Headlines broke in minutes. His capture was heralded as “justice,” as a “new page for Serbia.” Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, declared it “an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.” Paddy Ashdown, the former EU high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said it was “a great piece of justice for Bosnia and… an extremely important piece of justice for the world at large.”

Is it?

Since the arrest and Hague trial of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2002, the United Nations and the European Union have placed immense pressure on Serbia to comply with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, a court that much of Serbia’s nationalist leadership refuses to acknowledge as legitimate. In the timeline of Serbia’s rocky history, the leadership has gone from attempting to fulfill the requirements of admission to the EU to breaking ties with the EU, and now back again.

Since his first election in 2004, pro-EU President Boris Tadić has had difficulty pushing his agenda to bring Serbia out of isolation, primarily because his parliament is split between his progressive party and the Radical Nationalist Party of his presidential opponent, Tomislav Nikolić. So, it came as no surprise when in 2006, the EU suspended talks to integrate Serbia until the government complied with the ICTY by, among other things, handing over both Karadžić and his Bosnian military commander Ratko Mladić. While Serbian politics remain convoluted, the bottom line is that Tadić’s party, along with just over half of the Serbian population, seeks entry into the EU, whereas Nikolic’s and other nationalist parties do not. In May’s parliamentary elections, however, the Serbian progressive and nationalist coalitions reached a stalemate that favored Tadić’s pro-EU party. And scant weeks after that political impasse, Karadžić showed up.

In context, then, is it really so surprising that Karadžić has suddenly been captured? He was disguised for years, working as a doctor of alternative medicine and writing for health magazines. He was barely recognizable and impossible to find for over a decade and yet, when the timing was right, he was captured.

In a way, the capture is monumental: it is the breakdown of the iconic significance of Karadžić’s freedom and the end of a chapter wherein entire networks of military, intelligence and political agents pulled the strings behind Serb policy. When Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić turned over Milosevic in 2002, he was assassinated less than a year later, ostensibly by these Milosevic-era networks. Tadić, at least, seems to be functioning with a bit more support—though, judging by the riots in Belgrade, the Serbian people still worship their old president.

This week, the pressure has been on Serbia to capture Mladic. Serbia has also just announced that it will be re-instating its ambassadors in EU nations that recognized Kosovo—a major concession that will no doubt expedite its entry into the union.

Given the circumstances surrounding Karadžić’s arrest, then, it hardly seems appropriate to call the capture “justice” when, until this point, all evidence pointed to the harboring of fugitives by a taciturn Serbian government and authorities. “How can the most powerful alliance in the world tell us that they can’t find two Serbs?” said Jacques Klein six years ago, as coordinator of the UN mission to Bosnia. Clearly, the search was only in earnest when a pro-EU government decided that admission into the European Union was worth sacrificing the man whom so many Serbs still consider a nationalist hero.

So why the lofty ideas of justice floating around? Why the tossing about of this word, heavy with import; why the praise heaped upon Serbia, a country that, in essence, turned over a war criminal when she found it in her best interest? Surely we jest. The leveraging of Karadžić’s capture to gain entry into the EU is not justice; it’s politics. But perhaps the bell-ringing and back-patting is the result of what had been, until a few days ago, an embarrassment to an international community that remained impotent during the Bosnian war—an international community that now seeks to atone for its malfeasance by burying the hatchet beneath feel-good concepts like “justice,” “truth” and “reconciliation.”

The conflict between Serbia and Bosnia, like so many, is portrayed in rigid terms that undermine the complexity of the decisions made in both Sarajevo and Belgrade. Yes, the Bosnian Muslims were aware that they would suffer casualties under their plan for armed secession; they were warned by Karadžić several times that their fate would be “one hundred times worse [than that of Croatia]” and would “bring about the disappearance of the Muslim nation”. But the brutality that took place in Srebrenica, the ongoing terror presided over by Karadžić and Mladić, was completely unexpected.

The idea of sympathetic intervention was not irrational. After all, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, President George H.W. Bush decreed that “aggression would not stand” in the “new world order.” A UN-authorized military force then expelled Iraqi forces, lending credibility to Bush’s claim. When, in April 1991, a Kurd rebellion prompted a genocidal attack by Iraq, the United States deployed a humanitarian military intervention into Iraq to protect the Kurds and, indeed, help them acquire autonomy.

In 1992, a UN Protection Force for Croatia was stationed in Sarajevo. Most significantly, the US encouraged the European Community to recognize Bosnia’s independence regardless of whether Bosnian leadership accepted the soft partition plan, even going so far as to encourage the relatively defenseless Muslims to reject the plan. So even in 1993, when international mediators drafted a peace accord that granted concessions all around, the Bosnian leadership rejected it, positive that the United States and the United Nations would yet come to their aid.

In reality, it was a bluff — an attempt by the United States to gather Bosnian backing and prevent Serb aggression — and it failed at great cost. As the European Community’s negotiator, Jose Cutileiro, said “President Izetbegović and his aides were encouraged to scupper that [cantonization] deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state by well-meaning outsiders who thought they knew better.” Despite the questionable decisions on all sides, the fact remains that the United States and the United Nations were instrumental in the Bosnian decision to reject the peaceful Belgrade Initiative and victimize its civilians.

Fifteen years later, a hearing at an international court in the Netherlands hardly constitutes justice — neither on the part of Serbian military and political authorities, nor on the part of the international community. At best, it may be a start. Radovan Karadžić is a man indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide, and while his capture, however belated, may be a step forward, implying that it signifies justice is an insult to lives lost. It would serve us well to remember that justice is rarely ever a mere legal term; it is largely a moral term and an issue of compunction on the parts of all actors. And given the political atmosphere in Serbia and abroad, it is nowhere near being served.

Sara Haji is a third-year, Plan II and journalism student at the University of Texas at Austin.