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"Serbia in Europe, Kosovo in Serbia" reads a billboard advertising a referndum on Kosovo's status
The latest in a series of rumblings from inside Belgrade about the immanent arrest of fugitive war criminal Ratko Mladić, a source from the Serbian Army Security Agency told Banja Luka newspaper Glas Srpske that negotiations are in progress to apprehend Mladić. Rasim Ljajić, the President of Serbia’s coordination team with the ICTY, has neither confirmed nor denied the comment, suggesting, my colleague noted, that “this is not just hearsay”.
Perhaps the issue is best encapsulated by another piece of news. A bag with a laptop and discs Karadžić had with him when arrested mysteriously turned up today on the sidewalk of a Belgarde suburb three weeks after the arrest. An “anonymous citizen” called in with the tip. It is unlikely that the bag sat on the side of the road untouched for three weeks. It was probably held by the (still) unnamed forces which apprehended Karadžić.
Both this find and the anonymous sources hinting that Mladić’s arrest is immanent follow the same pattern: aiding in the arrest of war criminals without revealing that you’ve helped. The push away from the 90s and towards the EU is one officials are making, cautious that they won’t be implicated in the change. Perhaps they are afraid of ultra-nationalist reprisals, perhaps they are ambiguous about the direction Serbia seems to be heading.
Or, as a British colleague of mine put it “We haven’t forgotten our Communist past”.
Richard Holbrooke, the accused
Two weeks ago in his initial review by the ICTY prosecution, indicted Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadžić claimed that Richard Holbrooke, former US Envoy to Bosnia and broker of the Dayton Peace Accords, offered Karadžić immunity from arrest if he disappeared from political and public life. Karadžić said he signed a written agreement with Holbrooke in 1996 promising that he would not be sent to the Hague. Disregarded initially as one more wild claim made by an unhinged criminal given to bombastic speech, allegations that Holbrooke and the West protected Karadžić have since been made by more reputable sources.
Charles Ingrao, an history professor at Purdue and member of the Scholars’ Initiative, said in an interview with my editor last week that four sources in the US State Department confirmed Karadžić’s allegations: “A top State Department official with intimate knowledge of Holbrooke’s activities has confirmed that the Ambassador explicitly assured Karadzic that he would not be arrested, a concession known to several others at the State Department who have remained silent” said Ingrao.
Supporting this, Florence Hartmann, a spokeswoman for Carla Del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor for the ICTY, said that the United States, Britain, and France would regularly disrupt attempts to arrest Karadžić when investigators got too close: “Sometimes arrest operations were halted by Chirac personally, or other times by Clinton”, Hartmann told Blic. The third shoe dropped when James Luko, a former UN political affairs officer in Bosnia and Hague investigator, told a Belgrade newspaper that the Angus Ramsey, the former general of British peacekeepers in Bosnia, was ordered by London not to arrest Karadžić just minutes before his troops prepared to capture him in 1997.
The problem was not in Belgrade, it was in the West. Ingrao believes that Karadžić was protected because “It was feared that [his arrest] would destabilize the situation after the Dayton agreements.”
The validity Karadžić’s and former UN officials’s claim may be established in the next years of the Hague’s proceedings, though it is not hard now to imagine that the US would subvert its professed ideals to realpolitik. The important question is how this duplicity will be viewed by those in the Balkans. Most likely another exasperated shake of the head at a resented foreign presence.
Radovan Karadžić arrives at the detention center in the Hague this morning
At 6:30 this morning Radovan Karadžić landed in the Hague. By 7:45 he was in Scheveningen prison. The ICTY now begins the laborious process of preparing, hearing and ruling in the case against the most wanted war criminal of the Bosnian War. Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor, indicted Karadžić for genocide, crimes against humanity, extermination, and persecution among other charges.
At a press conference this afternoon Brammertz said that, although the case carries special importance and the tribunal is “fully aware of the need to be efficient”, Karadžić will probably not appear in trial for a number of months. The prosecution needs to prepare arguments, the court needs to whittle down the mountain of evidence before it, and Karadžić himself needs time to prepare his own defense.
Like Milošević, Karadžić has refused legal counsel and chosen to defend himself. The ICTY, hoping to avoid having Karadžić, like Milošević, turn their courtroom into a soapbox for bombastic nationalist speeches, is considering requiring Karadžić to take legal counsel. The trial will be a second chance for the ICTY, which, one analyst noted, “hopes to address the sense of frustration with and among the tribunal at the failure to sentence Milošević.
Karadžić was extradited to the Hague only nine days after his arrest. His lawyer filed an appeal, which would have delayed the extradition had it not gotten lost in the Bosnian postal system. The deadline for appeal passed this morning, and the ICTY wasted no time in removing Karadžić from Belgrade, where 16,000 protesters have gathered in the past two days. The Serbian Radical Party and the Serbian Democratic Party have organized the rally, bringing in thousands from rural locations where nationalism is extremely popular.
Pro-Karadžić protesters in Belgrade
80 people have been injured in the rally so far, 51 of them police officers. The protesters are calling for the resignation of the pro-European President Boris Tadić, and demanding that Karadžić be tried in Serbia rather than the Hague, calling the international tribunal an element of Western oppression against Serbia. “Everyone knows that the war crimes tribunal in The Hague was designed to try Serbs while the war criminals who killed Serbs are set free”, Elena Pavovski, a 24 year old supporter of the Radical Party told The New York Times, “Karadžić is a hero because he defended Serb lives during the terrible wars of the 1990s”.
A protestor at a rally against Kosovo's declaration of independence holds up a picture of Radovan Karadžić, February 2008
One day after the announcement of Radovan Karadžić’s arrest, posters appeared in the northeastern Bosnian town of Zvornik bearing messages of support for the former ICTY fugitive. They read “Karadžić: Our Serbian hero”, “We won’t let them catch you”, and, perhaps aping Le Monde’s “We are all Americans” of Sept. 13, 2001: “We are all Karadžić”.
On the same day the Serbian Radical Party announced on its website that there would be daily protests in Belgrade against Karadžić’s extradition to the Hague. The protests so far have not been large, with little more than 300 people gathering in the rain in Trg Republika. However, they have been violent and ultra-nationalistic (protesters at one point gathered outside the Turkish embassy. Turkey is a country that has nothing to do with the Karadžić arrest, but the majority of whose citizens share the same religion as Karadžić’s victims).
While the posters and the protests may be little more than the feeble backlash that should be expected when such a symbolic figure falls, what are more unsettling are the tepid reactions in the region, particularly in Serbia. Karadžić’s arrest is seen by some as another act of “punishment” against the Serbs for the wars of the 90s. “Only Serbs are being prosecuted and that’s not right”, Milica Milivojevic from Belgrade told the BBC, “If Karadžić is being sent to The Hague, then others from all sides of the conflict should too”. Even those elated with Karadžić’s arrest seem lukewarm about his extradition, and are cynical about the authorities who took 12 years to find him.
If Karadžić the wartime leader of the RS crafted and employed the myths of ethnic nationalism (still alive and well today), then Karadžić the Hague prisoner has become the myth of justice as a restrained victor’s revenge. Whether or not the cynicism and mistrust is undue (Karadžić did, after all, live in plain sight of NATO troops for several years with an INTERPOL warrant on his head, and the ICTY has a history of being made a farce of by its big fish), the new Karadžić myth moves the region no closer to reconciliation, and no further from the divisions which accelerated it into brutal war. Karadžić the scapegoat serves totalitarian nationalism just as well as Karadžić the president.
The real Dragan Dabić
Of all the surreal details about Radovan Karadžić’s second life as a fugitive war criminal (hiding behind the guise of a practitioner of alternative medicine in Belgrade, described as “a kindly Santa who cured ailments”) perhaps the most puzzling is his choice of alias. Karadžić was known to his patients as Dr. Dragan ‘David’ Dabić.
The actual Dragan Dabić was a Bosnian Serb from Sarajevo killed in 1993 by one of Karadžić’s snipers while waiting in line outside a humanitarian relief organization. He was killed outside of the Loris building, a block away from my apartment.
I went with one of my colleagues to meet Dragan Dabić’s only surviving relative, his brother Mladen, in a cafe in Grbavica. He didn’t have a clue why Karadžić chose to take his brother’s name, but was outraged that the killer of his brother should go further and assume his identity. “When I heard the news that war criminal Radovan Karadžić is using my brother’s name, I could not believe it. It was horrible. This was an act of dishonour to a person, who was killed by the army commanded by Karadžić,” Mladen told my colleague.
Dragan Dabić's brother, Mladen Dabić
The ID Karadžić used was issued in 1999 through “certain structures” close to Milošević’s Serbian Democratic Party. “It is obvious that he started his parallel life a long time ago,” said Vladimir Vukicevic, prosecutor for Serbia’s war crimes chamber.
It is a sick twist, but not beyond the imagination, that Karadžić should take the name of one of his victims; a victim who was also one of his “countrymen”, for whom he waged a genocidal campaign that ultimately claimed the lives of Dabić and more than 25,000 other Serbs. So much for that casus belli.
Radovan Karadžić’s website can be viewed here, along with his phone number and email address. A phony website was set up here: The irony is thick. Karadžić’s email address is healingwounds@dragandabic.com. From “his” favorite proverbs: “A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion”, “He who gives up his own should dig two graves”.
Hiding in plain sight? It really takes a lot to elude the forces of international justice.
A twelve year manhunt for the architect of the Srebrenica genocide ended last night as Serbian authorities announced the arrest of Radovan Karadžić. Indicted in 1996 by the ICTY for multiple counts of crimes against humanity, extermination, and genocide, Karadžić was the wartime President of the break-away Bosnian Serb territory of Republika Srpska. As a politician he incited ethnic nationalism and coordinated it into a brutal political and military force. As Supreme Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) he directly ordered and oversaw the Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing, commanding Ratko Mladić, the chief of staff of the VRS and now the most wanted man by the ICTY.
“Of the three most evil men of the Balkans, Milošević, Karadžić and Mladić,” said Richard Holbrooke told The New York Times, “I thought Karadžić was the worst. The reason was that Karadžić was a real racist believer. Karadžić really enjoyed ordering the killing of Muslims, whereas Milošević was an opportunist”.
Serb authorities said they had been watching Karadžić for a week after a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service. But Karadžić’s lawyer says that Karadžić was arrested on a city bus in Belgrade last Friday night, and was held incommunicado and unannounced by Serb authorities until Monday night.
Beginning last night Bosnian television has been replaying footage of Srebrenica and clips of Karadžić and Mladić shaking hands and inspecting Serb lines around Sarajevo. Headlines this morning read: “Karadžić Arrested: Sarajevo Celebrates, Banja Luka Shocked, Belgrade on the Verge of Incident”. The arrest was hailed by the chief prosecutor of the ICTY as “a milestone for coöperation, a milestone for international justice”, though Bosnians I’ve spoken to here retain their cynicism about the West and the hunt for war criminals.
Nonetheless, with the arrest and trial of one of the most violently nationalistic voices of the war (Karadžić’s speech in the Assembly of BiH in 1991 is considered to have been a principal precipitant in BiH’s disintegration), perhaps Bosnia’s deadlocked political dialogue will move beyond the tired and failed nationalism of the 90s. Read Aleksander Hemon’s article about the Karadžić myth, the actual man, and what his arrest promises:
“…Karadzic in the The Hague is a remedy to the Serbian nationalist mythology–Scheveningen is not a mythological space, but a prison. There, Karadzic would be in the limelight that would dispel the darkness of the nationalist mythology. He would be at the centre of a legal process, a trial based on documents and testimonies, which would demythologize his actions, and dismantle his criminal universe….”
