War Crimes:
Time to Arrest
Karadzic and Mladice
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON-- After a difficult and slow start the United
Nations war crimes tribunals are hitting their stride. The
new UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has purged the
incompetents at the Arusha, Tanzania, tribunal and we can
expect it now to move more rapidly in bringing to trial the
suspects it has in detention, accused mass-murderers from
Rwanda.
In The Hague this week the trial of three Muslims and a
Croat began, accused of war crimes against Serbs at a prison
camp in 1992. 74 men have been indicted so far, most of them
Serbian.
This is all progress, the first faltering steps of a new
responsibility for the international community--the
extension of the rule of law to the battlefield and its
aftermath. Unlike Nuremberg and the Tokyo trials following
World War 2 that were wrapped up as soon as their business
was complete, there is now a very tangible sense that these
new institutions and procedures are an ongoing and natural
evolution of the world's growing sense of a common humanity
and the need to apply the law as a weapon against violence
and mayhem.
The quest for civilization has been a long one but this
is one small but significant sign that we are heading in the
right direction. But the pace needs to be quickened. This is
very much like riding a bicycle. If we allow it to slow down
we'll fall off. The Dayton peace agreement that brought a
negotiated settlement to the war in Bosnia was very
specific--the leaders and not the followers were to be those
who should take the real rap. Yet indicted Bosnian Serb war
leader, Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, General
Ratko Mladic walk free. Slobodan Milosevic, who started the
war, remains in power as president of Serbia despite street
protests, despite sanctions and lives to twist the ambiguity
of his situation to strike business deals with the likes of
Douglas Hurd on behalf of the National Westminster Bank who,
until recently, as British foreign secretary, was supposed
to be attempting to be Milosevic's official nemesis.
Without the application in full of the Dayton accords
there is a grave danger that cynicism and stalemate will get
the better of optimism and progress, leaving the
international community with less than it had before it
established the war crimes tribunal and with the states of
ex-Yugoslavia themselves unpurged of their most murderous
elements. This cannot be gainsaid. Nevertheless, there is
another argument. If the objective of international
intervention in ex- Yugoslavia is to stop the fighting,
won't an attempt to arrest the warlords re-ignite the still
smouldering fires?
The answer lies in the timing. Done too fast the answer
would probably have been yes. Done later this year, probably
no. Who would have thought that General Manuel Antonio
Noriega in Panama would have submitted to arrest and trial
in the U.S.? Those that knew him best thought that his
response to the American invasion would be to take to the
jungle, blow a hole in the Gatun dam and drain the Panama
Canal. President George Bush's sense of timing was
impeccable.
There will be, if ex-Yugoslavia gets through this summer
without a renewal of serious violence, when winter returns
and the sanctions are still biting, the economy remains
moribund and the future grimly bleak, and the blood is, at
last, beginning to cool, a window of opportunity when a
quick surprise commando job could probably remove Karadzic
and Mladic without great upheaval or serious repercussion.
There's plenty of time to plan, reconnoitre and exercise for
it.
Periodic, fratricidal violence, is the Balkans'
historical lot. But there always have been lulls once enough
blood has been shed and people feel the necessity to get
their lives back in order, rather than engage in perpetual
disorder. The grudges, of course, will live on. Honor and
pride will be fought over by a later generation when the
romanticism of ultra-patriotism is no longer actively
countered by the price in blood and destruction now being
paid today.
It is important to get all this right for off-stage
another debate is simmering--the idea of a permanent
international criminal court. The homework for it has been
done over many years. If the political will were there it
could be set up fairly quickly. For the moment it is tied up
in the labyrinth of the UN's Sixth Committee, sniped at on
one side by China and India and, on the other, by the U.S.
Late last year President Bill Clinton gave his endorsement
to the idea of the court. But in practice American diplomats
are trying to weaken the proposed court's independence by
demanding that it be under the authority of the Security
Council.
Already the draft is too weak, permitting the court,
unlike the present tribunals for ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda,
to take jurisdiction only once a defendant's own national
courts prove unable or unwilling to try a case.
To the dispassionate observer the development of
international law in the second half of the twentieth
century is one of the outstanding achievements of our age.
But the dispassionate observers are few and the critics and
cynics all too many.
March 12, 1997,
LONDON
Copyright © 1997 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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