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Welcome though it must be, it is difficult to
applaud today’s guilty verdicts at the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslovia (ICTY) for Radovan Karadzic, the
wartime president of Republika Srpska. Coming more than 20 years
after the end of the Bosnian war, this is certainly justice delayed.
Karadzic, who hid for 15 years and has been on trial for five, will
now appeal and eventually serve out the rest of his life in relative
luxury in a first-class European prison. Few of his victims or their
surviving families will feel much “closure” from this outcome. His
supporters will see the ICTY verdict as selective and prejudiced
against Serbs.
Worse, people who support his political program of
independence for Republika Srpska are very much in charge there. I
can’t get too excited about the naming of a university dormitory in
his honor. What bothers me far more is RS President Dodik’s repeated
advocacy of independence for an entity that was founded on ethnic
cleansing, murder, rape and genocide committed against Bosniaks and
Croats that Karadizic commanded from 1992 to 1995. Since then, only
the current Syrian war has done as much damage proportionally as the
deaths and displacement inflicted on Bosnia during those years.
Dodik is an elected official and no doubt
represents the views of a majority of his Serb constituency. It
might even be argued that naming a university dormitory for Karadzic
is damning with only the requisite faint praise. But Karadzic was
convicted of one count of genocide (acquitted on another), five of
crimes against humanity and four violations of the rules and customs
of war, including murder, terror, unlawful attacks against civilians
and taking of hostages. How easy should the students sleep in such a
dormitory?
This is not the same as an American university
named after slaveholders George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
America today doesn’t celebrate them for holding slaves but rather
for other contributions to a society still trying to come to terms
with what we recognize as the crimes against humanity they and their
contemporaries committed. Washington was our revolutionary military
commander and Jefferson the author of the declaration of
independence that declared all men created equal, quite the contrary
of his personal behavior.
Karadzic and Dodik have demonstrated much more
consistency than our founders. They have not deviated from claiming
that Republika Srpska belongs to the Serbs who rightfully wrested
most of the towns and much of the rural area from Muslims, Croats
and others who had lived there for centuries. For them all people
are not created equal and military success is its own justification.
Those ideas are inconsistent with today’s standards, as enunciated
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the now voluminous
laws of war. Dodik’s modest virtue is that he merely espouses odious
ideas. Karadzic’s crime was that he acted on them.
The conviction puts Belgrade in an awkward spot. I
expect lots of nationalist Serbs there to praise and defend Karadzic
and denounce the tribunal. But I certainly hope the Serbian
government understands that its aspirations to EU membership are
inconsistent with even modest official complaints. The Serbian
parliamentary election campaign may tempt some to don the
nationalist mantle. But for anyone wanting to maintain good
relations with Washington and Brussels doing so would be a big
mistake. It is bad enough that Karadzic for years managed to hide in
Serbia. Compounding that felony would be a big mistake.
I understand those who will say that justice
delayed is justice denied. But in this case justice delayed is
better than the only realistic alternative: no justice at all. It
would have been worse had Karadzic managed to remain at large, in
Serbia or elsewhere, or if he had–like Slobodan Milosevic–died in
prison. I’m not celebrating: these verdicts come far too late. But
I’m not disappointed either: Karadzic led a criminal enterprise
whose basic ideas Dodik still espouses. For the sake of Bosnia and
Herzegovina as well as the Balkans region, better to have a clear
decision of the Tribunal than not to have anything at all.
PS: For those who have the stamina, 1.75 hours of
verdicts:
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