Caledoniyya

After almost thirteen years on the lam, the former Serb politician Radovan Karadžić (Радован Караџић) has been captured on home turf by Serb security forces.

That the arrest comes just ten days after the thirteenth memorial for the victims of the Srebrenica Genocide, an act masterminded by Karadžić, is timely.

Known as the “Osama Bin Laden of Europe”, the 63-year-old’s capture was confirmed last night by the office of the current Serbian President, Boris Tadić.

The court must now present criminal charges before extraditing Karadžić to the United Nations court in The Hague.

The news naturally prompted a mass display of jubilation, as the Bosnian capital Sarajevo teemed with jubilation; one resident explained: “This is the best thing that could ever happen – you see people celebrating everywhere… I called and woke up my whole family”.

For international observers, the capture means progress for the languishing international war crimes tribunals, and credence the notion that patience, multilateral diplomacy and creativity can make the institutions more effective.

Radovan Karadžić was born June 19, 1945 in Petnjica, SR Montenegro, SFR Yugoslavia, to a family hailing from the Drobnjaci Montenegrin clan.

His father, Vuko, had been a member of the Chetniks – the remnants of the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia – and had passed much of his son’s childhood in jail.

In 1960, Karadžić moved to Sarajevo to study psychiatry at the Sarajevo University School of Medicine, passing the years 1974-1975 pursuing medical training at Columbia University in New York.

Upon his return to Yugoslavia, he worked in the Koševo Hospital. He also became a poet, falling under the influence of the Serbian writer Dobrica Ćosić, who encouraged him to go into politics.

As the first President of the Serbian Republic, Karadžić commenced his political ascent in 1989 with the foundation of the Serbian Democratic Party (Српска демократска Странка) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which aimed at gathering the Republic’s Bosnian Serb community and joining Croatian Serbs in leading them in staying part of Yugoslavia in the event of secession by those two republics from the federation.

The turning point arrived in February and March 1992, when a referendum on the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia was held.

Many Serbs boycotted the referendum while Bosniaks and Croats and pro-secession Serbs turned out, and 64% of eligible voters voted 98% in favor of independence.

On April 6, 1992, Bosnia was recognized by the UN as an independent state and Karadžić became president of the Bosnian Serb administration in Pale in May 1992, following the demise of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

During his presidency, Karadžić was central to the development of relations external to Serbia – most notably among fellow Orthodox countries such as Russia and Greece, and it is here that he found support, both politically, and on the run.

In February 1994, for instance, he secretly contacted the Greek government and proposed the creation of a Greek-Serbian confederation based on the known Serbian-Greek Friendship, an idea which Milošević had also proposed in 1992.

Secondly, during his absence it was ventured repeatedly that Karadžić was concealed in Russia.

Nevertheless, his capture means that he will at last face charges issued in 1995 for the following crimes:

• Two counts of genocide (Article 4 of the Statute – genocide, complicity in genocide);
• Five counts of crimes against humanity (Article 5 of the Statute – extermination, murder, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, persecutions, inhumane acts (forcible transfer));
• Three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war (Article 3 of the Statute – murder, unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians, taking hostages);
• One count of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (Article 2 of the Statute – willful killing).

For the writer of the blog Finding Karadzic, the news heralds the end of a dark period in which one of the foremost war criminals is at last captured and justice might at last be meted out:

I began searching for Radovan Karadzic over six years ago. The day we’ve all been waiting for came today with the news of Karadzic’s arrest in Serbia.

The world is a better place today than it was yesterday. Those of us interested in international criminal justice sometimes grow weary at the unfairness and impunity that are often the end results of the worst misconduct in the world by some of the worst people in the world.

But not today. Radovan Karadzic now will begin the process that will see him face the charges listed in his indictment of instigating genocide and intentionally killing thousands of Muslims in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. [Balkan Ghost]

Elsewhere on the Balkan blogosphere, the response has ranged from wry:

And the Competition Begins…

…. for the most vapid article about the arrest of Karadžić. The first entry is from Marcus Tanner, who gets the wife’s name wrong and assures us that the whole business is all about Marcus Tanner. [East Ethnia]

To pensive:

Radovan Karadžić arrested. It is really sad that this is the first line in this blog. Radovan Karadžić has been arrested.

 

I don’t hate Serbs, I don’t even care if someone is Serb or Croat. I’m not even a war child. I spent my childhood in peace, the war was happening in my country, but I wasn’t part of it. But still, I remember the alerts on television, I remember reports about casualties, I remember children coming to my school, children with so strange accent… children lost in space. Without parents, without anyone who could understand them. Children who had lost everything by the time they were five!

 

I am not happy. This news just reminded me of horrors happening in my country during the 90s. I am not happy, I just wish that it never happened. [Gente Di Mare] 

I think it is with the final point that Gente Di Mare captures my sentiments: the arrest of Karadžić is a triumph – no doubt – but it remains a small step in securing justice for all the men, women, and children who lost their families and lives due to the fervid epidemic of nationalism promulgated by poet-politicians like Karadžić.

Let us not forget also that another war criminal remains at large: Ratko Mladić (Ратко Младић), whose crimes include genocide, crimes against humanity, and numerous war crimes – including crimes relating to the alleged sniping campaign against civilians in Sarajevo.

On November 16, 1995, the charges against Mladić were expanded to include charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes for the attack on the United Nations-declared safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995, and the taking of hostages amongst UN peace-keeping personnel.

The crux of the argument – although futile – remains that while joy can be held at the capture, sorrow remains for what has gone before it.

[Images via: BBC, Advocacy Project, beatdrifter, Janet Rabin.]