How to Eliminate Karadzic?

The Republic of Srpska and the Hague

For the international community, as well as for the Hague and the Bosniac leadership, the story about Karadzic and Mladic is turning into a game with a political background and uncertain duration. The problem is that all sides are interested in continuing the game. However, paradoxically enough, only those who are giving the game its strongest flair – the RS leadership – do not share this interest.

AIM, Banjaluka, September 19, 2001

The idea of some Serbian politicians (true, never publicly presented) that the New York disaster and search for Bin Laden's connections in Bosnia would push Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic into the background, had somewhat tragicomic qualities. A sudden discovery of the “Daily News” (Dnevni Avaz) that Karadzic was hiding in the Vilus monastery and Mladic in Valjevo, represented a similar thesis proving the complementarity of national mentalities in Bosnia. Naturally, the “Avaz” (always loyal to the authorities) was thus warning the foreigners: Let Bin Laden alone, Karadzic and Mladic are still at large.

As usual, such return of these two forgotten fugitives to the focus of attention speaks about the overblown Bosniac perception of their own importance in international frameworks as the latest product of war times, when Western TV stations used to start their news with reports from Sarajevo or Pale. But, the story about Karadzic and Mladic is too small, especially as regards the assumption that the Americans will redirect their forces and attention from the arrest of these two towards Afghanistan and Bin Laden. Bosnia and its fugitives prompted its American “advocate” Richard Holbrooke to warn his fellow-countrymen of the order of magnitude. “We are not even able to catch Karadzic in B&H, where the NATO forces with the American soldiers have been stationed long ago. What will happen on one of the hardest grounds on this planet, no one knows”, said Holbrooke regarding Bin Laden's apprehension.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE AUTHORITIES: On the other hand, after the attack on the New York Trade Centre Bin Laden has become on of the American social obsessions, while Karadzic and Mladic were not that even at the times of their greatest “glory”. Naturally, this doesn't mean that they will come out of the woods now, brush their clothes from leaves and return to civilian life because the Americans have bigger fish to fry! However, the fact that they did not feel the change in the American foreign policy doesn't mean that there was none. Karadzic and Mladic have become what they have always been – a regional problem and a case on which local political elites should demonstrate their commitment not only to peace, but also to order of values they want to import from the West into the Balkans irrespective of their private opinion of those values.

That is why foreigners in Bosnia tolerated endless discussion about the Law on Cooperation of the Republic of Srpska with the Hague, although objections that it derogated B&H as a state, which Mladen Ivanic and his Cabinet have agreed to, cannot be totally disregarded. They have some ground in the fact that the RS would like Karadzic and Mladic to be primarily the Serbian problem because they are convinced that only the Serbs that would arrest Karadzic and Mladic could divest them of the mythical dimension that foreigners have given them with their years-long fruitless chase.

But, it seems that the RS leadership, although on the one hand assuming the attributes of statehood (The Law on the Hague), on the other doesn't want to accept the responsibility such statehood implies. Namely, the demands of the RS leadership that foreigners should arrest Karadzic and not shift that responsibility to local authorities (which in these last few days Serbian officials have been reiterating everywhere from Sarajevo to the Hague), actually unmasks the inability of the Republic of Srpska to behave as a state. Otherwise, anything that considers itself a state would arrest Karadzic and hand him over to the Hague or would defend him to the last man, not allowing the SFOR to get him. The wish of the Serbian authorities to have foreigners do their dirty work for them (in which Ivanic's reformist PDP are no different from the conservative SDS) represents the shedding the responsibility inherent in the authorities and passing it onto foreigners. True, neither has the opposition in RS (gloating over the hot potato which Ivanic and Kalinic have ended up with and are getting ready to dump onto SFOR) taken any responsibility for Karadzic.

WHO DOESN'T WANT KARADZIC IN THE HAGUE: The RS authorities were not too much excited even when Pierre Prosper, US Ambassador in charge of War Crimes, told them that in case Karadzic and Mladic did not appear in the Hague they could not count on any assistance nor SDS(until then one of the ruling RS parties) on any international legitimacy. On the other hand, Florence Hartman, spokesperson for the Chief Hague Prosecutor, accused the RS leadership of maintaining contacts with Karadzic not because the Hague had irrefutable proof of this, but because it wanted to warn Banjaluka seriously that the Hague considered two of them to be primarily the responsibility of the RS Government. In other words, the Law on the Hague did not solve much and the foreigners will have every reason to consider the time they had to wait for this law wasted. For, it will be evident soon enough that neither that nor any other law can provide an answer to Banjaluka's objections that it was unaware of Karadzic's whereabouts and that even if it knew where he was, that it was unable to get him.

Thus, Karadzic has become a quadruple problem: for the RS, for the Hague, for what we call the international community and the Bosniac leadership in Sarajevo. For the first he represents a dilemma between staying in power and saving the entity. But, no one in RS had the guts to say – it is either they or we – or to reply that foreigners were lying and that Karadzic was no threat for the survival of RS. On the other hand, they could have explained that by arresting Karadzic they would lose voters, which was crystal clear and beyond any question. After Milosevic, Karadzic has become for the Hague a point of honour because if he doesn't end up in Scheveningen by fall, Carla del Ponte will no longer be sure that she has the biggest Balkan fish there – Milosevic. On the other hand, as long as it is not filled up, as long as it is demanding new prisoners, the Hague is a political factor number one in the region, and there is no doubt that Carla del Ponte loves it. For the international community Karadzic is a political problem: if they try to arrest him and fail or pay for it too dearly, their stake (which has been drastically increased by the New York tragedy) will be measured (they are unable to catch Karadzic but, nevertheless, want Bin Laden). That is why foreigners cannot give up and would love Serbs to do this job. Finally, introducing Polish special units into the game might seem as a medium solution: if they arrest him it will be another success of the international community in Bosnia, and if they fail they will remain just Poles from American jokes.

Finally, at this moment for the Sarajevo authorities Karadzic means much more than just the notion of revenge or justice: focussing attention on Karadzic means shifting back the story on terrorism from Mujaheddins (the problem of which has miraculously reappeared in Bosnia)to Serbs. At the same time, it is not so certain that they are so eager to send Karadzic to the Hague: who would be foolish to voluntarily lose such efficient means of exerting pressure on the RS.

INTEREST IN THE GAME: In the end, it was Belgrade that put Banjaluka in a spot when early this month, at his meeting with Carla del Ponte, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic agreed (true, strictly unofficially) that Karadzic and Mladic should be treated as a regional problem. That means that Djindjic has promised that Serbian authorities would arrest Karadzic and Mladic if they find they on the Serbian territory instead, as was the case till now, kindly warning them through mediators that Serbia needed foreign credits more than it needed two of them.

Irrespective of the Law on the Hague (which according to some officials in Banjaluka did not mean that the Serbs would be arresting other Serbs, but only bring them in) together with the Croatian part of Bosnia, the RS might become the last place in the world beyond the Hague's reach.

Everything that has been happening these last few weeks regarding Karadzic and Mladic is slowly turning into a game with a political background and uncertain duration. The problem is that all sides, including foreigners, are interested in continuing the game. However, paradoxically enough, only those who are most involved in this game – the RS leadership – do not share this interest.

Zeljko Cvijanovic (AIM)