LOCAL PRESS

 

UN court sentences Radovan Karadzic to 40 years imprisonment (B92)

The Hague Tribunal issued a first instance verdict against Radovan Karadzic for crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and sentenced him to 40 years imprisonment. The Court considers that Karadzic is responsible for joint criminal enterprise during the siege of Sarajevo, a joint criminal enterprise the kidnapping of members of the UN forces, as well as genocide in Srebrenica. Karadzic, who was the leader of the Serbian Democratic Party, is charged with two counts of genocide in Srebrenica and seven in other Bosnian municipalities, during the Bosnian war of 1992-95. In the remaining nine counts, the indictment charges him with persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, terrorizing the civilian population, unlawful attacks on civilians and taking international hostages. These criminal acts are qualified as crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war.

 

Seventeen years since NATO attacks on Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (RTS)

NATO air strikes on Serbia, i.e. the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) began today, seventeen years ago. In the course of 78 days, at least 2,500 people were killed, and more than 12,500 people were wounded. One thousand and thirty-one members of the Army and Serbian police were killed, while around 6,000 civilians were seriously and slightly wounded, including 2,700 children. Five thousand one hundred and seventy-three soldiers and policemen were wounded, while around ten people are still missing. The total damage is estimated at tens of billions of dollars.

The decision on the bombardment of the then of FRY was passed, for the first time in history, without the approval of the UN Security Council, while the order was given to then U.S. General Wesley Clark by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. Clark later wrote in his book entitled “Modern Warfare” that the planning of the NATO air operation was already under way in mid-June in 1998 and was completed in August of that year.

The FRY was attacked under the pretest that it is the culprit for the failure of the negotiation sin Rambouillet and Paris on the future status of the province of Kosovo and Metohija.

After the Serbian parliament confirmed the decision on not accepting foreign troops on its territory and suggested that UN forces should oversee a peaceful solution to the Kosovo conflict, NATO began airstrikes on 24 March 1999 at 19:45, using cruise missiles and aviation, at several locations in Serbia and Montenegro. Nineteen countries of the Alliance started the bombardment from the ships in the Adriatic, from four air bases in Italy, supported by strategic bombers that took off from bases in Western Europe, and later from the U.S. as well.
Almost every town in Serbia had been targeted by NATO during the 11 weeks of the air strikes.
The bombing destroyed and damaged 25,000 housing units, 470 km of roads and 595 kilometers of railways. The attacks also damaged 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 20 health centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges, while 38 were destroyed.

During the bombardment NATO carried out a total of 2,300 air strikes on 995 facilities across the country, while 1,150 combat aircraft launched nearly 420,000 missiles. NATO launched 1,300 cruise missiles, dropped over 37,000 cluster bombs, which killed some 200 people and wounded hundreds, and used prohibited ammunition with depleted uranium. One-third of the electrical power capacity of the country was destroyed, and two oil refineries, in Pancevo and Novi Sad bombed, while NATO forces used the so-called graphite bombs to disable the power system. After several diplomatic pressures, the bombing ended with the signing of the Military Technical Agreement in Kumanovo on 9 June 1999, three days after which the FRY forces started withdrawing from Kosovo and Metohija. After the NATO secretary general issued the order on 10 June on ending the bombing, the last projectiles fell on the region of the Kokolec village at 13:30. On that day, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, and 37,200 KFOR soldiers from 36 countries were sent to the province, with the task of keeping peace, security, and ensuring the return of thousands of Albanian refugees until it defines a broad autonomous status for Kosovo.

 

Nikolic: NATO bombing disgrace of civilization (RTS/Beta/Tanjug)

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic laid a wreath in a tribute to the people killed in the 1999 NATO air attack on Belgrade’s Dragisa Misovic Hospital. “For as long as Serbia exists and for as long as there is memory, places of suffering such as this should be visited because a lack of memory would transform us into some other nation and some other people,” Nikolic told reporters after laying a wreath at a memorial to the seven soldiers and three patients killed in the May 20, 1999 bombing. In the bombing of the hospital, there were casualties in a place where people were fighting for their lives and where no bombs should have fallen, said Nikolic, who noted that, on each anniversary of the NATO bombing, he always visits a different site targeted by the air attacks because, he said, the aggressor did not choose its victims either. “All such places - this one more than any other - are the disgrace of a civilization at the end of the 20^th century that was in a conflict with a policy and a leadership that did not suit it,” Nikolic said. In the bombing of Serbia, many states joined forces in order to commit a crime, which is why this must be remembered, Nikolic said.

 

Djuric to Pristina: Don’t cut the branch you’re sitting on (RTS)

The Head of the Office for Kosovo Marko Djuric said on Wednesday to the officials in Pristina not to cut the branch they were sitting on, because it is contrary to any idea of normalization of the relations with Belgrade, adding that such things do harm to both sides, news agencies reported. Responding to the reciprocal measures Kosovo introduced on Tuesday at midnight at the border crossings with Serbia, Djuric said to the reporters in Gracanica that Serbia did not believe in problem solving through conflicts and tensions. Kosovo Customs began to implement “reciprocal measures” in oil and gas transportation, which includes turning the trucks with Serbian products back to Serbia. The Kosovo government claimed that Serbia’s authorities do not allow imports of oil derivatives from Kosovo, while the second complaint relates to the placement of Fluid factory’s drinks. Djuric said that the events related to the disruption of trade was a classic example of interference of freedom of movement, freedom of trade and that it was something that would bring no good either to the Serbs, or the Albanians. On the other hand, it is a clear violation of both domestic and international law, and we - in direct and close dialogue and cooperation with the international institutions - are looking for the best way to respond to this, Djuric said.

 

Azerbaijan blocks Kosovo’s accession to international conventions (RTS)

The Embassy of Azerbaijan in Belgrade has announced that this country opposed Kosovo’s accession to international conventions. The Kosovo government websites have recently announced the information that Kosovo had joined The Hague Convention on abolishing the requirement for legalizing foreign public documents, or the so-called Convention on Apostil that was concluded on 5 October 1961. However, on 22 February, the Dutch government website published the statement that Azerbaijan opposed Kosovo’s accession. Netherlands is the depository of the Convention, i.e. it is the country that was entrusted to take care of membership and implementation, reads the Embassy’s statement. According to the website information, Azerbaijan stated that it doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent state and that it advocates the opinion that Kosovo, in accordance with international law, doesn’t possess statehood criteria. Moreover, Azerbaijan claims that the depository of the Convention doesn’t have jurisdiction to qualify some institution, in this case Kosovo, as a state, so that the notification dated 17 November 2015 cannot be considered a document, which gives such jurisdiction to the depository, i.e. Netherlands. “Based on research of internet sources, we managed to clarify that the notification dated 17 November implies the statement on Kosovo’s accession to the Convention on Apostil, which was published, in the capacity of the depository, by the Dutch Foreign Ministry,” reads the statement. It is pointed out that Georgia also maintains an almost analogical reasoning, which also voiced disagreement to the depository in regard to the same statement. Azerbaijan and Georgia constantly support Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

 

Dacic: No one should be lecturing us on human rights (Tanjug)

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said in Jagodina Wednesday that Serbia was pursuing the politics of peace and was tired of being lectured to on human rights and the rights of national minorities. “We as the strong, the strongest and the biggest in this region, we want to be an example to others,” Dacic said emphatically at a ceremony of unveiling of a wax figure of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Wax Figures Museum in Jagodina, central Serbia.

The fact that some countries in our neighborhood are member-states of the European Union does not mean that Serbia should be putting up with hypocritical remarks from them. Serbia should not be lectured to by those who “expelled hundreds of thousands of Serbs from their homes and killed thousands of people in genocide in Ustasha and Nazi camps during the Second World War, or those who killed Serbs and traded in their organs in Kosovo and Metohija,” said Dacic.

Dacic added that he did not want to be comparing between our and their victims, but rather wanted Serbia to move forward and be big and strong, and our country had to be stable and economically developed for that to be possible.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

Karadzic sentencing scheduled for today (Srna/Fena)

The RS Assembly Deputy Speaker Nenad Stevandic said that all positions on a ruling that will be handed down to the first RS President, Radovan Karadzic, no matter what it may look like, are clear to everyone both in RS and the Federation of B&H, and that it should not be turned into a factor of additional destabilization, a factor of war or insults. The President of the Socialist Party (SP), Petar Djokic, said that the first RS President Radovan Karadzic should be exonerated of charges if the Trial Chamber is guided by evidence of his actions during the war. Leader of the Serbian Radical Party Dragan Djurdjevic stated on Wednesday that the Serbian radicals express their support to the first RS President Radovan Karadzic by protesting in Belgrade and announced the arrival of 200 protesters from RS. During Radovan Karadzic’s marathon trial, the prosecution brought witnesses to prove he was guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, while testimony from the defense disputed the crimes or tried to show he wasn’t responsible. The verdict to former President of RS Radovan Karadzic is awaited pretty quietly in Srebrenica, as all the other important verdicts before this one, although this is one of the most important ones, Srebrenica Mayor Camil Durakovic told Fena. “We can expect relief from the Karadzic judgment - finally a high ranking official will be sentenced. If Karadzic and Mladic’s closest associates were sentenced to life imprisonment, it is likely that Karadzic will get the same sentence, the founder of the Humanitarian Law and coordinator of the RECOM process Natasa Kandic told Fena on the eve of the sentencing of the wartime President of RS, Radovan Karadzic, which is scheduled for today in The Hague.

 

Dodik: Security agencies need to work together (Srna)

Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik and French Ambassador to B&H Claire Bodonyi stressed the need for all security agencies to cooperate on fighting terrorism on Wednesday. Dodik reminded Ms Bodonyi of the fact that RS had formed the Office for Fighting Terrorism and Extremism of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The ambassador expressed pleasure with the cooperation of B&H police agencies with the French police, said the President’s office. The two officials talked about the coordination mechanism on EU-related matters and other conditions that B&H has to meet in order to obtain candidate status for EU membership. Dodik and Bodonyi also discussed other current issues in RS and B&H. RS Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic and the French Ambassador to B&H, Claire Bodonyi, said that terrorism is a security threat at a global level and that strong and united fight is needed in order to suppress this greatest scourge of a contemporary world. Cvijanovic said that the fight against terrorism is one of the key priorities of the RS Government and reiterated the Government’s firm commitment to act in partnership with all progressive forces to suppress this security threat. In addition to the current political and economic situation in RS and B&H, and security challenges, with a particular focus on the recent terrorist attack in Belgium, Cvijanovic and Bodonyi also discussed the Coordination mechanism as one of the key elements for B&H’s progress towards the EU. Cvijanovic said that since the very beginning, RS has had an active approach to resolving the European issues and stressed that positive steps have been taken in order to arrive at a document which will be functional and which will fully respect constitutional competences of all government levels in B&H. Cvijanovic and Bodonyi also exchanged opinions on prospects for implementing projects in the field of development of RS’s tourism potentials.

 

Dodik to Ivantsov: To get the Coordination mechanism which will be the result of a consensus (Srna)

At a meeting with the Russian Ambassador to B&H Petr Ivantsov yesterday in Banja Luka, the RS President Milorad Dodik expressed the expectations that B&H will get a Coordination mechanism which will be the result of a consensus.

 

Ferguson: It is possible to find fair solution for City of Mostar (Fena)

British Ambassador to B&H Edward Ferguson visited Mostar yesterday,  where he met with  top functionaries of the  of the City  Boards of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and the Croatian Democratic Union of B&H Salem Maric and Damir Dzeba says the statement issued by the  British Embassy. Ferguson expressed his believe that it is possible to find a fair solution for the city of Mostar. Top SDA functionaries stated that the elections in Mostar must be held in 2016.

 

Drobnic: With dialogue to compromise (RTCG)

Head of the EU Delegation to Montenegro Mitja Drobnic said he is convinced that the compromise decision will be brought through political dialogue and that the issue of the election date in Tivat be solved within the framework of the political process. He said that the European institutions are welcoming parliamentary dialogue and hope that this process will soon bring results with the agreement of political parties. “We followed the process in the capacity of passive observer and we believe that it should lead to free and fair elections in the autumn,” said Drobnic to reporters. Parliamentary dialogue will, as he said, be very significant if Montenegro after the elections produce a stable parliament which will be able to take the necessary decisions. Asked whether the political agreement should be harmonized until March, so that there would be no dispute over the elections in Tivat, Drobnic said that this is a process where actors are Montenegrin political parties, and they need to mutually assess the extent to which the electoral system is ready to be applied. “I am convinced that decision will be made that will be a compromise between the extreme positions and that the issue of the election date in Tivat will be solved within the framework of the political process of understanding among the parties", said Drobnic. He said that the European institutions are following the statements of political parties. "Optimism exists among most parties involved in the process and it is also tied to the dates when the negotiations could be completed,” concluded Drobnic.

 

Boycott idea failed: 12 candidates lists submitted for the elections in Tivat (Dnevne Novine)

The Municipal Election Commission (OIK) in Tivat received 12 candidates’ lists for participation in the upcoming local elections scheduled for 17 April. According to the OIK chairman Jovanka Lalicic, the candidates lists of the following parties and citizens’ groups were received: Boka Forum, Arsenal for Tivat, the Social Democrats of Montenegro (SD), Croatian Civic Initiative (HGI), Liberal Party (LP), Social Democratic Party of Montenegro (SDP), Democratic Serbian Party (DSS), Montenegrin Democratic Union (CDU), Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the Socialist People's Party (SNP) and Tivat Action. Leaders of the lists are following: Andrija Petkovic, PhD (Boka Forum), Budimir Cupara (Arsenal Tivat), Zdravko Mitrovic (SD), Ilija Janovic (HGI), Borislav Samardzic (LP), Mileta Jakovljevic (SRS), Vojislav Kaludjerovic (SDP), Dejan Risancic (DSS), Neven Stanicic (CDU) and Snezana Matijevic (DPS). There are speculations that another “non-party list” is possible to appear, the candidates of which would be officials of the Municipal Board of the New Serb Democracy (NOVA) in Tivat. However, the party did not confirm the information yesterday, Dnevne Novine daily reported. Democratic Front, URA, Demos, and Democrats have said that they will boycott the local elections in Tivat.

 

President Ivanov: Macedonia and Greece must cooperate in refugee crisis (MIA)

All the activities that Macedonia is undertaking in order to manage the migrant crisis are in accordance with the measures agreed upon by all the countries along the Balkan corridor. So far, the country has not undertaken any single-handed action, Macedonia's President Gjorge Ivanov stated. "Greece knew that upon reaching the migrant quota limit Austria would commence with a total shut down of the corridor, which happened, and everyone in Greece knew about it. So, we insisted that when the moment comes, Greece's territory should start to unload. We insisted on finding a way, whether it be through aerial corridors, for every migrant stuck in Greece to be transported to the desired destination state, which is mostly Germany", Ivanov stated in the interview for the Greek TV statin. When asked whether Macedonia will extend the fence on the southern border, Ivanov declared that the fence was erected so the country can protect itself from illegal migration and thanks to the fence, Macedonia was able to register about 99 percent of the illegal migrants. "We are protecting Macedonia's border and that is why we erected the fence, it was not to protect ourselves from Greece, but to protect ourselves from the illegal migrants coming from Greece's territory, As long as the illegal migration persists, the fence will stand in place and it will be upgraded by highly sophisticated equipment. We will install thermal cameras, sensors and other tech equipment in order to stop illegal crossings, which should cease, and Greece would also benefit from this. When migrants finally realize that they are not allowed to go north then they won't even come to Greece. So we need to get through this difficult period, to be mutually coordinated and to undertake synchronized actions, Macedonia's President stated. In relation to the current cooperation with Greece, Ivanov said that mutual trust and collaboration are still lacking. "We lost much time due to the irresponsibility of people from Greece regarding the security problem. The reaction by the Greek Prime Minister should be saluted, but did it have to come to the level of president and prime minister for solutions in the jurisdiction of the countries' police services", says Ivanov. The President adds that Greece has refused the exchange of security information in the context of the refugee crisis and interrupted the meetings of the groups working on confidence building measures. Regarding the statement of Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias that the decision to close the route would result in consequences for Macedonia in its European and Euro-­Atlantic integration, Ivanov said the Greek official should backtrack on its words. "What can Greece do more? Block Macedonia for another 25 years? This is not how good neighborly relations work. We cannot change history or geography", says Ivanov. He underlined that Macedonia and Greece must cooperate as neighbors, because they are united in the future of young generations, who do not want to be held hostage to politicians and narrow-minded individuals living in the past.

 

Croatia among most corrupt EU Countries (Hina)

Croatia is a European Union member with the highest level of corruption in the public procurement and, along with Romania and Bulgaria, it ranks among the most corrupt countries of the European Union, a survey commissioned by the European Parliament and carried out by the non ­profit RAND Europe institutes shows. Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria lead a group of 14 EU countries that have above­ average levels of corruption, and the highest risk for corruption among the public procurement contracts is observed in Croatia, the Hina news agency reports. The survey shows that Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia lose about 15 percent of the GDP to corruption, and that the corruption costs the European Union between an EUR 179 billion and EUR 990 billion in the GDP terms on an annual basis. "What is more, the findings suggest that corruption has significant social costs (more unequal societies, higher levels of organised crime and a weaker rule of law) and political costs (lower voter turnout in national parliamentary elections) and lower trust in the EU institutions", the report says. RAND Europe therefore proposes legal and regulatory measures at national levels, including extending the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) to other EU members. The CVM was launched by the European Commission ahead of the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the EU in order to help the judicial reforms in the two countries and their fight against the corruption and the organized crime. Application of this mechanism to other EU countries could reduce the costs of the corruption in GDP terms by around EUR 70 billion annually, and Croatia could save about EUR 2.2 billion, according to the survey.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Serbia Remembers NATO Bombing Casualties (BIRN, by Ivana Nikolic, 24 March 2016)

Hundreds of people gathered in the central town of Varvarin to commemorate 17th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that helped to end the Kosovo war in 1999.

Several hundred people including top Serbian officials gathered on Thursday in Varvarin to pay tribute to the victims of the air strikes which lasted for 78 days from March to June 1999.

On May 30, 1999, NATO strikes killed ten people and wounded 14 more when the Varvarin bridge over the Velika Morava river was bombed. Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik threw wreaths and flowers into the river in tribute to those who were killed. Vucic said that the NATO bombing was “needless aggression against a small, free Balkan country”, which was a grave crime. “Seventeen years later, we want to say proudly to everyone – with a sad voice, but quietly and clearly – you were killing us, you were killing our children, but you didn’t kill Serbia because no one can kill Serbia,” Vucic said. Serbia’s public broadcaster  RTS’s children’s choir performed at the commemoration, singing the song ‘This is Serbia’. Apart from the central commemoration in Varvarin, several others were held in several cities across Serbia. President Tomislav Nikolic laid wreaths and flowers in front of the Dragisa Misovic Dedinje in Belgrade, which was also bombed, saying that Serbia and Serbs should never forget the NATO campaign and its victims. “As long as there is Serbia and as long as there is remembrance, places like this should be visited, because a lack of remembrance would turn us into some other nation and some other people,” Nikolic said. During the 78 days of the NATO military campaign aimed at driving Slobodan Milosevic's forces out of Kosovo, the Serbian government estimates that at least 2,500 people died and 12,500 were injured, but the exact death toll and the full extent of the damage remains unclear. It is estimated that the bombing damaged 25,000 houses and apartment buildings and destroyed 470 kilometres of roads and 600 kilometres of railway. So far only Serbia’s defence ministry has publicly revealed its data, saying that NATO forces killed 631 members of the Serbian armed forces, while a further 28 went missing. NATO has also never revealed its losses. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was the West’s response to the failure of talks to try to bring an end to the conflict in Kosovo. During the bombing, Yugoslav forces carried out an extensive campaign in Kosovo, resulting in the expulsion of the Kosovo Albanian population. The Hague Tribunal charged Milosevic and six other top officials with committing war crimes in Kosovo, although the former leader died before a verdict was reached. The bombing ended on June 10, 1999, after the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement and the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which was followed by the withdrawal of all Yugoslav military forces from Kosovo and the arrival of 36,000 international peacekeepers.

 

The Radovan Karadžic war crimes trial is Europe’s biggest since Nuremberg (The Guardian, by Julian Borger, 23 March 2016)

A guilty verdict is hardly in doubt, but how the tribunal handles the case will profoundly affect how the world responds to other mass atrocities

When Radovan Karadžić faces judgment in The Hague on Thursday for the mass murders of the Bosnian war, it will be the most important war crimes ruling in Europe since Nuremberg.

It will also be a moment of truth for the international criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), 23 years after its creation as an ad-hoc experiment in enforcing international humanitarian law and holding war criminals to account. How the tribunal is ultimately judged will profoundly affect how the world responds to today’s mass atrocities and those yet to come. A guilty verdict is hardly in doubt. Karadžić led a breakaway Bosnian-Serb “republic” that became infamous for “ethnic cleansing” – that euphemism for mass killing and terror. The uncertainties are over the degrees of guilt, in particular the question of whether the crimes amounted to genocide. Compared to the rock-bottom expectations at its birth, the ICTY has been a triumph

Whatever the outcome, it will cause anguish and bitterness in the region. Whatever grim satisfaction that might have been felt in Bosnia, where 100,000 people died between 1992 and 1995, has been attenuated by the passage of time. As seen from Sarajevo, justice delayed by two decades represents justice denied. Meanwhile, in the half of Bosnia known as Republika Srpska, and in Serbia itself, a guilty verdict will be seen as further proof that the tribunal is inherently anti-Serb, notwithstanding its earlier convictions of Croats, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Kosovans; and the fact that the crimes committed in the name of Serb nationalism were on a greater scale. On all sides the fixation on the “genocide” issue is likely to cloud any dispassionate assessment of the verdict, as if crimes against humanity were not horrific enough. It will take time for the fog and fury to clear, before a proper reckoning of the tribunal’s contribution will be feasible, but even then any assessment will be coloured by expectations of what the tribunal – and international justice – can achieve.

The hunt for Radovan Karadžić, ruthless warlord turned ‘spiritual healer’

Considering the rock-bottom expectations at its birth, the ICTY has been a triumph. The tribunal and its twin for Rwanda, the ICTR, were the first international war crimes courts since Nuremberg, and came into being as an exercise in guilt. The mass atrocities would not be prevented, but those responsible could at least face judgment. Few of the nations who brought the ICTY into life in 1993 had any expectation it would ever function properly. The UK and France in particular tried to starve it of funds in its infancy. In its early days, it could not afford to lease a court building or pay for interpreters. The prosecutors and judges who were hired to fill its ranks, however, were not content to play walk-on roles in a theatre of justice. They forced western capitals to take it seriously and bring defendants to The Hague voluntarily or otherwise.

In the end, all 161 indictees on the ICTY list faced justice one way or another, many of them tracked down in an unprecedented international manhunt by the west’s combined intelligence agencies and special forces. The tribunal fulfilled one of the purposes of justice by simply removing dangerous criminals from the region where they had occupied positions of leadership, and their removal helped stabilise the 1995 Dayton peace accord. Despite the scale of the killings that had gone before, and the fears of Nato peacekeepers, scarcely a shot was fired after the deal was signed. Furthermore, the tribunal has created an essential historical record of the crimes committed that runs to millions of pages, with extensive eye-witness testimony and forensic evidence. That archive will become more important with every passing year, in the face of nationalist denial and state-sponsored amnesia. Justice is also meant to provide a measure of solace for the survivors and victims, a sense that their suffering has been heard and understood, with penal consequences for their persecutors. From that point of view, the justice on offer at The Hague was destined to be incomplete. More than 130,000 people were killed in the course of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, most of them civilian victims of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In the face of murder on this scale, The Hague indictment list of 161 suspects was illustrative rather than comprehensive. It is not justice’s fault that it appears so paltry in face of such atrocious crimes. Lower-ranking defendants were supposed to be judged at state courts in the region, and that process is continuing, albeit partially and painfully slowly.

Bosnia's bitter, flawed peace deal, 20 years on

In 1995, the rival factions in Bosnia’s war met to bash out a solution under the watchful eye of the US. But over time the Dayton agreement has become a byword for inertia, neglect and despair. What went wrong? The greatest disappointment of the ICTY was that all the testimony, scrutiny and judgment in the courtroom failed to bring any real reconciliation to the Balkans. Croatia and Serbia have a grudging understanding based on necessity, but Bosnia and Kosovo are more divided than ever. Children in the different ethnic silos grow up with radically divergent narratives of what happened in their home towns and villages. Just this week, Karadžić’s successor as president of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, honoured Karadžić by opening a student dormitory named after him. Mending those rifts was too great a burden to put on a mere judicial process, but the tribunal did not help itself. Its outreach to the region was belated and underfunded, and the whole process just took too long. Almost everyone in the court – prosecution, defence, the bench and administration – had their legal meters ticking, and little reason to expedite proceedings, at an average cost of over $200m a year. It is an expensive and often wasteful endeavour, but the price of impunity is immeasurably greater. It includes the hundred of billions spent in the face of a terrorist threat that can trace its origins and its ferocity to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere.

For all its flaws, the ICTY has been the high point in the centuries-long effort to rein in humanity’s most brutal excesses. It has set a benchmark against which all future efforts will be judged.

 

Choosing Sides in Serbia: Neutral or NATO? (Havard International Review, by Paul Keetch, 24 March 2016)

Russia’s media are currently in a lather about their nation’s old friend Serbia becoming too chummy with the old adversary NATO. The mystery is: why?

For all sorts of reasons, both domestic and diplomatic, Serbia is showing absolutely no hint of wanting to join NATO. It does want to join the European Union. Oddly, in a purely UK context, and as a Liberal, I am actively campaigning to have Britain leave the European Union; however, I understand Serbia’s instinct for the economic security of a customs union. On the other hand, I’m a long-standing political supporter of NATO’s mission in Europe. And here again, I understand the Serbian government’s very different view. Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić has said repeatedly that Serbia has no plans to join NATO. For its part, NATO has acknowledged this, stating only recently that it “fully respects Serbia’s policy of military neutrality.” There is widespread support for joining the EU but almost no political support at all for NATO accession. Therefore, almost by definition, it will not happen. End of story, you might think. Except it’s not. In February, the Serbian parliament ratified a new agreement on Logistic Support Co-operation. This appears at first glance to give NATO personnel operating in Serbia diplomatic-style immunity from local legal liability and wide-ranging exemptions from duties and taxes. The agreement is with the NATO Support and Procurement Organization (NSPO), and it states: This Agreement establishes the legal framework and foresees the basic principles for the support co-operation between the Government of the Republic of Serbia and NSPO in the specified areas including, but not restricted to, supply, maintenance, procurement of goods and services, transportation, configuration control, technical assistance and execution of Trust Fund Projects for which NSPA is the Executing Agent. Some of the Vučić government’s political opponents have gone on the attack, loudly expressing the view that their nation is now under de facto NATO occupation. In fact the agreement is a tidying up of a series of agreements first signed in 2006—by a Serbian government then led by the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), which has been staunchly critical of the recent update. The original deal gave NATO troops free passage through Serbia for deployment in Kosovo where one of their tasks was to protect the area’s Serb population. “We need NATO as an ally to keep our people in Kosovo safe,” Vučić has said. The updated deal, far from supplying NATO with new rights, actually applies reciprocity for the first time, giving Serbia’s own military the same rights as those already enjoyed by NATO. “Map showing NATO expansion,” by Kpalion. CC BY-SA 3.0, accessed via Wikimedia Commons. Nonetheless, there have been anti-NATO street demonstrations, cheered on—quite surprisingly—by the same DSS which signed the earlier agreement in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, the Russian state media picked up on the controversy quickly. Moscow’s Sputnik news agency, successor to the old propaganda outlet RIA Novosti, quoted a Serbian “expert” named Dragana Trifkovic. “I have to mention that this form of cooperation is far worse for Serbia than its NATO membership because Serbia is now de facto at NATO’s disposal,” Trifkovic says. “On the other hand NATO has absolutely no obligations towards Serbia, unlike the commitments that exist towards the member States.” This is not the first time Trifkovic has surfaced in Sputnik’s reporting. In November, she was quoted extensively about Russia’s annexation of Crimea. “Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the United States has been redrawing the borders in Europe according to their needs, starting from the Balkans. Serbia was bombed just because it did not voluntarily consent to the American occupation,” Trifkovic was quoted as stating. So we know where she stands. Serbia joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace program in 2006 (under the DSS government). Like Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Georgia, and the other Balkan nations, Serbia has more recently agreed to an Individual Partnership Action Plan with NATO. Some of these states, including Georgia, really do want to join NATO. But no one is forcing them. And no one is concerned that (for instance) Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan resolutely do not want to move in that direction. And no one is nudging Belgrade towards accession either. “America will never impose a security arrangement on another country,” President Barack Obama declared in 2009—in his famous “reset” speech in Moscow. That principle appears to be holding. Serbia has declared herself militarily neutral. This makes sense for Serbia. Its cultural and historical ties to Russia are long and deep. Just before his death in 2010, the great Serbian thinker and political theorist Svetozar Stojanović wrote, “If it became a NATO member, it could not retain its close ties with the important group of nonaligned countries, nor could it preserve its reputation as a country that participates in UN peace missions on a principled basis.” He added: “Pluralization—instead of singularization—of foreign and security policy is what gives ‘intelligent power’ to a small state such as Serbia.” He was right. Nations like Serbia shouldn’t need to choose sides.