Slobodan Milosevic, the man responsible for most of the misery in the Balkans in the last ten years, finally found himself in front of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. This Tribunal has been tasked with prosecuting those accused of war crimes both in the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo), and in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Although the court has done great work in bringing some to justice, their biggest problem has been getting the top leaders of the Serbs to be brought before them.
Milosevic was the former communist bureaucrat who took advantage of the collapse of communism in 1989 to transform himself into a virulent ethnic Serb nationalist. With that new support, he set himself up as virtual dictator of Yugoslavia, which the Serbs dominated. In response, several non-Serb provinces broke away and went for independence. The small province of Slovenia made a clean and mostly peaceful exit in 1991, but when Croatia also bolted, the Serbs went to war in the first war on European soil since World War II. After about 18 months of fighting, a shaky truce took hold and Croatia was independent.
Next was Bosnia’s turn. Bosnia was province, with its capital in Sarajevo, with a mixed population about 45% Muslim, 35% Serb, and 20% Croat. In a referendum, the majority voted for independence in early 1992. In response, the Serbs launched a vicious war backed by Milosevic who gave his full military support. The Serbs of Bosnia, along with forces sent by Milosevic, engaged in widescale ethnic cleansing. Many Muslim towns and villages were forcibly emptied. Rape and torture were used systematically to terrorize the civilians, and Europe saw concentration camps opened for the first time in almost 40 years, where Muslims were kept like slaves, beaten, and starved. Sarajevo was put under siege as Serb artillery and snipers on the hills around the city made life for its residents a living hell.
This went on for 3 years, and over 150,000 Muslims were killed. Milosevic smiled as his Serbs took control of 70% of Bosnia. Only after his forces massacred 6000 Muslim boys and men in 1995 at Srebenica did the West take real action. Muslims and Croats were given sufficient arms, and NATO launched an intense air campaign against the Serbs, ultimately resulting in the Dayton Peace Accords and the deployment of 20,000 NATO peacekeepers.
Milosevic was setback but not beaten. In 1998 he turned on Kosovo, a part of Serbia that is 90% Muslim Albanians who were kept under terrible oppression. A civil war in that region eventually resulted in massive ethnic cleansing in 1999 by the Serbs; Clinton led a US/NATO air campaign that reversed that.
In a shocking turn of events, the people of Serbia finally got rid of Milosevic in October 2000, and a new democratic government took power. Milosevic was later arrested for corruption charges, and then last week was summarily shipped off to The Hague to face war crimes charges. In return, US and EU donors pledged over a billion dollars in reconstruction aid to Serbia.
Several other major figures in the Balkan wars still remain at large. The head of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, and the general in charge of the Srebenica massacre Ratko Mladic, both remain in hiding in Bosnian Serb controlled territory. They have lived comfortably for over five years despite being under indictment for war crimes.
The War Crimes Tribunal may be a sign of an overall improvement in the level of civilization in the world. No Tribunal ever looked at the European colonial wars or the actions of the Israelis in 1948. Belgium’s own court right now is actually examining whether war crimes charges should be filed against Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his responsibility for the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. If leaders see that eventually the world will call them to justice, then perhaps some of the most terrible aspects of war might be softened.
But these tribunals are often only “victor’s justice”. It was morally bizarre to see Stalin’s regime sitting in judgment of Nazi war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. Until the UN can show independence enough to indict leaders of all countries that commit war crimes, these courts will be viewed as suspiciously political.
The other issue still to tangle with is what constitutes a war crime. Is the intentional death of civilians always a war crime? If so American and British air bombardments in World War II were war crimes. If not, then how does one draw the line? Many have argued that US atomic bombing against Japan, which killed 150,000 people, was a war crime. But the US position was that 2 million would have died in an invasion of Japan, and the atom bomb spared both Japan and the US far worse. Serbs argued that civilian Serb deaths in the NATO air campaign were a war crime. Should Bill Clinton then be indicted? The intersection of war and morality remains a quagmire.