In theory, he's a wanted man. Sought after by the international community in its entirety.
General Radko Mladic was the leader of the Bosnian Serb army from 1992-1996. His ruthless conduct in the civil war in Bosnia, including the widespread maltreatment of prisoners and the disappearance of many more, led to his indictment for war crimes by the United Nations War Crimes Commission in 1995.
However, his career didn't end there. He is believed to have been recruited by the Belgrade leadership to command and supply units responsible for massacring and raping thousands of ethnic Albanians in the war-torn province of Kosovo that eventually led to NATO intervention.
His whereabouts? A three-floor white villa at 119 Blagoje Parovica, on the diplomatic hill in Belgrade. It looks like an honorable home for a retired general, not exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of a fugitive hideaway.
He walks the streets of the capital without an escort, at ease in a country that promises to be implacable, perhaps, with thieves of the state coffers, but lenient with exterminators.
For the Serbs, he represents an inconvenience not a prime criminal that they feel obliged to turn over. There is no public relations campaign going on against him in the media as there is against Milosevic, which has led many to believe that the former dictator's arrest is imminent, perhaps in the next couple of weeks.
The Serbs, however, have no intention of trying Milosevic for his role as the master planner of destruction. His indictment will be limited to acts of thievery. His complicity in the acts of horror that tore Yugoslavia apart for the past decade is controversial and unpopular subject matter.
There is reason if no rhyme to such a peculiar moral code. It has to do with the inability to come to terms with the darkest moments of one's own past. If the Serbs were to attempt such a task of sincerity, they would have to deal with many who still have an important role in the present institutions, even members of the present government.
They would also have to explain to themselves how it was that Milosevic won the support of his people during the most horrifying episodes of human slaughter to be committed in Europe since 1945.
It's a mirror that is difficult to stare into. A nation that has been swept up in a frenzy of mass madness is reticent to any excessive soul-searching. After years of collective insanity, there is a burning desire for normalcy. The Germans know something of this, so do the Italians. It has taken them over fifty years to come to face with some of the blackest episodes of their past.
Last weekend veteran supporters of the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman demonstrated in the Dalmatian city of Spalato against the willingness of the new government of Zagreb to collaborate with the International Tribunal concerning its own war criminals. Croatian nationalism could be as horrific as Serbian nationalism.
The demonstrators hardly represent the majority of Croatians. According to the latest polls, they represent only 5% of the electorate. However, the Croatians are also moved by practicality rather than penitence. The economic crisis following Tudjman's death has made them only too aware of how the former president used his position to pillage the state treasury beyond imagination.
The arrests that both the Serbs and the Croatians are willing to make seem to have more to do with barter than remorse. The appear to consider the arrest of their war criminals as a fee they must pay to the puritan moralizations of the West in order to gain access to the coffers of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
That sort of commercial logic is unlikely to build the foundation of democracies based on the rule of law. The Nuremberg principles on war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity are as noble in their conception as they are flawed in their application. It is also the bad conscious of the West that seeks justice ten years too late for the wrongs it knows it could have limited by recognizing them in time.
February 2001
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