Karadzic's Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed
by Srdja Trifkovic
July 22, 2008
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The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the
doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war,
Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim
crimes are understandable. This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a
month before Karadzic's capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of
Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was found not guilty by The Hague Tribunal of any
responsibility for the killing of thousands of Serb civilians by the
forces under his command in the three years before the fall of the enclave
in July 1995. It is also apparent today, in the endless media repetition
of Karadzic's alleged bellicose intransigence before and during the
Bosnian war.
UNRESOLVED ISSUE OF WAR GUILT
The imbalance is more than merely unfair. The talking heads gloating over
Karadzic's capture no longer need to suppress the thought that different
U.S. policies could have prevented the horror of "Bosnia," because no such
thought-however pertinent in this case-ever occurs to them. Yet the fact
remains that in the spring of 1992 the late Warren Zimmermann, the last
U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia before its breakup and civil war, materially
contributed-probably more than any other single man-to the outbreak of the
war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The facts of the case have been established
beyond reasonable doubt and are no longer dosputed by experts.
Nine months earlier, in June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared
independence, a move that triggered off a short war in Slovenia and a
sustained conflict in Croatia where the Serbs refused to accept Tudjman's
fait accompli. These events had profound consequences on Bosnia and
Herzegovina, that "Yugoslavia in miniature." The Serbs (34%) adamantly
opposed the idea of Bosnian independence. The Croats (17%) predictably
rejected any suggestion that Bosnia and Herzegovina remains within a
Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia.
Alija Izetbegovic, the leader of the Muslim community (43%), had decided
as early as September 1990 that Bosnia should also declare independence if
Slovenia and Croatia secede. On 27 February 1991 he went a step further:
"I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that
peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty." The
process culminated with the referendum on independence (29 February 1992).
The Serbs duly boycotted it. In the end just over 62 percent of voters
opted for independence, overwhelmingly Muslims and Croats; but even this
figure was short of the two-thirds majority required by the constitution.
This did not stop the rump government of Izetbegovic from declaring
independence on 3 March.
Simultaneously one last attempt was under way to save peace. The
****tuguese foreign minister Jose Cutileiro organized a conference in
Lisbon attended by the three communities' leaders, Izetbegovic, Radovan
Karadzic, and the Croat leader Mate Boban. The EU mediators persuaded the
three sides that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be independent but internally
organized on the basis of ethnic regions or "cantons."
The breakthrough was due to the Bosnian Serbs' acceptance of an
independent Bosnia, provided that the Muslims give up their ambition of a
centralized, unitary one. Izetbegovic appeared to accept that this was the
best deal he could make-but soon he was to change his mind. When he
returned from Lisbon, Zimmermann flew post haste from Belgrade to Sarajevo
to tell him that the U.S. did not stand behind the Cutileiro plan. He said
it was a means to "a Serbian power grab" that could be prevented by
internationalizing the problem. When Izetbegovic said that he did not like
the Lisbon agreement, Zimmerrmann encouraged him to renege. State
Department subsequently admitted that the US policy "was to encourage
Izetbegovic to break with the partition plan." The New York Times (August
29, 1993) brought a revealing quote from the key player himself:
The embassy [in Belgrade] was for recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina
from sometime in February on," Mr. Zimmermann said of his policy
recommendation from Belgrade. "Meaning me." . Immediately after Mr.
Izetbegovic returned from Lisbon, Mr. Zimmermann called on him in
Sarajevo. "He said he didn't like it; I told him, if he didn't like it,
why sign it?"
After that moment Izetbegovic had no motive to take the ongoing
EC-brokered talks seriously., just as the Albanians had no motive to
negotiate with Belgrade in 2007, after President Bush declared in Tirana
that it would become independent. After his encounter with Zimmermann
Izetbegovic felt authorized to renege on tripartite accord, and he knew
that the U.S. administration would come to his assistance to enforce the
independence of a unitary Bosnian state.
The motives of Zimmermann and his political bosses in Wa****ngton were not
rooted in the concern for the Muslims of Bosnia as such, or indeed any
higher moral principle. Their policy had no basis in the law of nations,
or in the notions of truth or justice. It was the end-result of the
interaction of pressure groups within the American power structure: Saudis
and other Muslims, neocons, Turks, One-World Nation Builders, Russophobes.
all had their field day. Thus the war in the Balkans evolved from a
Yugoslav disaster and a European inconvenience into a major test of "U.S.
leader****p." This was made possible by a bogus consensus which passed for
Europe's Balkan policy. This consensus, amplified in the media, limited
the scope for meningful debate.
Zimmermann's ploy heralded a virulently anti-Serb, agenda-driven form of
Realpolitik that was to dominate America's Bosnian policy. Just as Germany
sought to paint its Maastricht Diktat on Croatia's recognition in December
1991 as an expression of the "European consensus," after Zimmermann's
intervention in Sarajevo Wa****ngton's fait accomplis were straightfacedly
labeled as "the will of the international community." Europe was resentful
but helpless when the United States resorted to covert action to smuggle
arms into Croatia and Bosnia in violation of U.N. resolutions.
Zimmermann's torpedoing of the EU Lisbon formula in 1992 started a trend
that frustrated the Europeans, but they were helpless.
Cutileiro was embittered by the US action and accused Izetbegovic of
reneging on the agreement. Had the Muslims not done so, he recalled in
1995, "the Bosnian question might have been settled earlier, with less
loss of life and land." Cutileiro also noted that the decision to renege
on the signed agreement was not only Izetbegovic's, as he was encouraged
to scupper that deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state by foreign
mediators."
THE SETTING
Over the past two centuries Balkan lands were bargaining chips for
alliance construction. The Bosnian war of 1992-95 confirmed this trend. It
was the most destructive segment of the War of Yugoslav Dissolution that
began when the Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia seceded in the
summer of 1991. With no ethnic majority and no "Bosnian" nation, of all
six republics of the old Yugoslav federation the Republic of
Bosnia-Herzegovina had most to fear from violent secession. Yet once
reunited Germany was committed to the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia,
the Muslim leader****p in Sarajevo knew both that the old Yugoslavia was
dead and that historic op****tunities beckoned.
At the outset of the present crisis most inhabitants of Bosnia-Herzegovina
did not want to become "Bosnians" in any political sense; but they were
unaware of the extent to which their future depended on events beyond
their republic's boundaries. The ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia
literally disintegrated in the first months of 1990, setting the stage for
multi-party elections in all six federal republics. The resulting power
vacuum was felt in Bosnia-Herzegovina more keenly than in other republics
because the Party rule there was more rigidly doctrinaire than in other
federal units. When the first multi-party election since 1938 finally took
place in November 1990, the voters overwhelmingly acted in accordance with
their ethnic loyalties that proved more enduring than any ideological
differences between them.
The weakness or even non-existence of non-nationalist opposition to the
old communist establishment was at least partly due to the deliberate
Western policy of appeasement of Tito's dictator****p following his break
with Moscow in 1948. Contrary to the situation in Poland ("Solidarity") or
Czechoslovakia ("Charter 77"), in Tito's lifetime and even in the decade
following his death in 1980 there had been no serious attempt by the
United States to develop or cultivate alternative political teams in
Yugoslavia among the narrow stratum of the intellectual establishment
which could have been considered friendly to "Western democracy." In
accordance with the Kennan Doctrine, Tito's dictator****p enjoyed America's
cheque blanche to do as it pleased domestically, for as long as it shunned
full rapprochement with Moscow.
When the system unravelled the Muslims were the first to organize,
founding their Stranka Demokratske Akcije, SDA (Party of Democratic
Action) in March 1990. The Croats followed two months later with the
creation of Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine-HDZ BiH
(Croatian Democratic Union); in reality theirs was but a local subsidiary
of the retired YPA General Franjo Tudjman's HDZ in Zagreb. Finally, in
July the Serbs established the Srpska Demokratska Stranka Bosne i
Hercegovine, SDS (Serb Democratic Party of Bosnia-Herzegovina). The
pattern of the Muslims and Croats acting proactively, and the Serbs
reacting, was thus established very early on.
When the Bosnian election results were tallied, they effectively read like
a census plain and simple. The overwhelming share of the vote-80
percent-went to the three parties that had grounded their appeal in the
ethnic-national identity and issues. In the National Assembly of 240 seats
(Chamber of Citizens and Chamber of Municipalities), the SDA won 86 seats,
the SDS took 72 seats, and the HDZ 44. The three winning parties soon
reached a power-sharing agreement. Although the maverick
businessman-politician Fikret Abdic from the region of Velika Kladusa
polled more votes, due to the constitutional vagaries of the late-Yugoslav
Bosnia Alija Izetbegovic was elected President of a seven-member
multi-ethnic rotating presidency. The prime ministry of the Republic went
to the HDZ, and the presidency of the Assembly to the SDS.
The tripartite coalition agreement was applicable not only to the
distribution of posts at the level of the Republic, but also at the
regional and municipal level. The ruling SDA-SDS-HDZ coalition, contrary
to some dark predictions by the defeated communists, started functioning
without major difficulties in the early months of the new regime. The
notion of such cooperation was counter-intuitive to the outside observers
of the Bosnian scene, but it made perfect sense in the context of the
common desire by all three groups to purge the body-politic of the
decades-long layers of communist lies and distortions.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1990 three tiers of government authority were in
existence, those of the Republic itself, of the regions, and of
municipalities. Depending on the level of participation among the
coalition partners, the distribution of political power was accordingly
carried out at all levels. The apparent ability of the three "nationalist"
parties to cooperate in the immediate aftermath of the election was based
on one thing they all had in common: the desire to break free from the
Titoist straightjacket. During Tito's lifetime the three constituent
nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina found themselves under steady pressure to
"Bosnify" their identities. (Bosnian Serb writing, to take a little known
but drastic example, was not to be classed as Serbian literature but as
Bosnian literature.)
The SDA, the HDZ, and the SDS, all sought to recreate long-established
identities, to represent real, traditional national diversity as against a
new, synthetic ("modern") composite identity. This was a blast of fresh
air; it was not the precursor of war as one can see from the simple fact
of amicable co-operation. It was, in any case, a natural response to the
decay of communist authority. But the SDS were in no sense "anti-Yugoslav"
in the political sense: what they were against was the communist
cultivation of false nationality ("Yugoslav," "Bosnian"), as against the
spontaneous, natural identities of the historic nationalities of
Yugoslavia.
Had Yugoslavia not been breaking up in 1991-92, this emphasis on
traditional identities would have passed as a perfectly natural democratic
readjustment to reality. The "Left Bloc" was finished, defeated even in
the municipality of Prijedor where it confidently expected to be
victorious thanks to the area's "Partisan" tradition and strong "Yugoslav"
spirit. The old CPY apparat was simply irrelevant: the pampered friends
and clients of the old bureaucracy, who could not explain why their
version of Yugoslavia had needed a police state to keep together. The
truth is that there was no internal, Bosnian threat to peace at the
beginning of 1991: when it came the threat was from outside. The SDS and
the SDA were not simply in coalition: they were natural allies while
Bosnia remained at peace, although they would become just as natural
enemies if Yugoslavia fell apart.
KARADZIC'S EARLY POSITION
Karadzic headed the party representing the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
and they wanted, overwhelmingly, to preserve the status quo. Since they
had no desire for the destruction of Yugoslavia, they were forced into
reactive posture vis-à-vis those who willed the Federation's
disintegration. It is im****tant to dispose of the idea that the Serbs of
Bosnia in 1991 were simply fanaticized by Belgrade propaganda: they were
still gasping for air after the Titoist era and composing a revisionist
history of ethnic civil war and Serbian suffering, a history which may
have contained new exaggerations, but which corrected the evasions and
lies in the old story.
At the outset of the last Yugoslav crisis, the Serbs' basic argument-even
if seldom stated with simplicity and coherence-was clear when freed from
rhetoric: they had lived in one state since 1918, when Yugoslavia came
into being. They reluctantly accepted Tito's arbitrarily determined
internal boundaries between the six federal republics-which left one third
of them outside Serbia-proper-on the grounds that the Yugoslav framework
afforded them a measure of security from the repetition of the nightmare
of 1941-1945; but they could not swallow an illegal ruse that aimed to
turn them into minorities, overnight and by unconstitutional means, in
their own land.
Even without the vividly remembered trauma of the Second World War, they
reacted in 1991-1992 just as the Anglophone citizens of Texas or Arizona
might do if they are outvoted, one day, in a referendum demanding those
states' incor****ation into Mexico. They demanded the right that the
territories, which the Serbs have inhabited as compact majorities long
before the voyage of the Mayflower, not be subjected to the rule of their
rivals. In the same vein the Protestant Ulstermen demanded - and were
given - the right to stay apart from united Ireland when the nationalists
in Dublin opted for secession in 1921. In the same vein the state of West
Virginia was created in 1863, incor****ating those counties of the
Commonwealth of Virginia that refused to be forced into secession. The
Loyalists of Ulster and the Unionists of West Virginia were just as guilty
of a "Joint Criminal Enterprise" to break up Ireland, or the Old Dominion,
as were the Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina who did not want to be dragged
into secession against their will.
Yugoslavia was admittedly a deeply flawed polity, and there could have
been no rational objection to the striving of Croats, and even Bosnian
Muslims, to create their own nation-states. But equally there could have
been no justification for forcing over two million Serbs west of the Drina
to be incor****ated into those states against their will, and without any
guarantees of their rights. Yugoslavia came together in 1918 as a union of
South Slav peoples, and not of states, or territorial units. Its divorce
should have been effected on the same basis; the boundaries of the
republics should have been altered accordingly.
This is, and has been, the real foundation of the Yugoslav conflict ever
since the first shots were fired in the summer of 1991. Even someone as
unsympathetic to the Serb point of view as Lord David Owen conceded that
Josip Broz Tito's internal administrative boundaries between Yugoslavia's
republics were grossly arbitrary, and that their redrawing should have
been countenanced at the time of Yugoslavia's disintegration:
Incomprehensibly, the proposal to redraw the republics' boundaries had
been rejected by all eleven EC countries. [T]o rule out any discussion
or op****tunity for compromise in order to head off war was an
extraordinary decision. My view has always been that to have stuck
unyieldingly to the internal boundaries of the six republics within the
former Yugoslavia. as being the boundaries for independent states, was a
folly far greater than that of premature recognition itself.
THE MUSLIM STRATEGY
Of the three ethnic-religious parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Muslim
party-the SDA-was perhaps the most radical, in that it alone advocated a
fundamental restructuring of the Bosnian society in accordance with divine
revelation. It attempted to do so not on Bosnia's own terms, not within
the Republic's own local paradigm, but within the terms of the
global-historical process-as its leaders saw it-of the global Islamic
renaissance. Many commentators in the West have been in a state of denial
for years about the true nature of Alija Izetbegovic's long-term program.
To put it simply, they preferred to believe their own assurances that
Izetbegovic's blueprint is not "Islamist" but "multicultural."
Not unlike Islamist parties elsewhere-notably the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP) in Turkey-the SDA had a public, "secular" front,
and an inner core of Islamic cadres that remained semi-conspiratorial in
the early days. This is vividly described by one of the party's founders
who had previously made a successful business career in the West, Adil
Zulfikarpasic. He was appalled by the "fascist" methods of the SDA and by
its "conservative, religious, populist" orientation, Adil Zulfikarpasic
founded his own party, the MBO (Muslim Bosniak Organization). It fared
badly in the elections of 1990 but it nevertheless left an im****tant mark
by charting the potential for a genuinely secular, "post-Islamic"
political force of the Bosniaks.
In the early stages of the Bosnian crisis numerous Western re****ters and
commentators have claimed that the SDS sought to scare Bosnian Serbs with
exaggerated and untrue claims of the militantly Islamic character of the
SDA ideology and policy. It is a matter of record, however, that
Izetbegovic was an advocate of Sharia law and a theorist of the Islamic
Republic long before the first shots were fired. Already as a young man
during World War II, Izetbegovic was a member of the Young Muslims
organization (Mladi Muslimani). His was a radical Islamic political
organization inspired by the teaching of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Al
Husseini, who toured the German-occupied Europe preaching that the Third
Reich and the Muslim world had a natural community of interests that
demanded personal commitment of every able-bodied Muslim. Izetbegovic's
ideas subsequently matured into a comprehensive, programmatic statement in
the Islamic Declaration (1970), the do***ent that led to his imprisonment
by the communist authorities in 1983.
The Declaration became Izetbegovic's de facto political platform.
Reprinted in Sarajevo at a key moment in 1990, it startled the public. In
the language familiar to the students of militant jihad everywhere, it
called for Islamic moral and religious regeneration, and for the
strengthening of different types of Islamic unity-up to, and including,
armed struggle for the creation of an Islamic polity in countries where
Muslims represent the majority of the population.
As Izetbegovic put it,
The Islamic movement must, and can, take over power as soon as it is
morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the
existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one. There
is no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic
social and political institutions.
This was a political program par excellence that non-Islamic groups in
Bosnia could not accept; for the Serbs "it confirmed their suspicions that
Izetbegovic wished to transform Bosnia-Herzegovina into an Islamic state."
The author's contempt for Western values is evident in his dismissal of
the Kemalist tradition: "Turkey as an Islamic country used to rule the
world. Turkey as an imitation of Europe represents a third-rate country
the like of which there is a hundred in the world." Elsewhere, he accepts
the "achievements of Euro-American civilization" but only in the area of
"science and technology. we shall have to accept them if we wish to
survive." In a revealing sentence, Izetbegovic discusses the status of
non-Muslims in countries with Muslim majorities: "The non-Muslim
minorities within an Islamic state, on condition that they are loyal
[emphasis added], enjoy religious freedom and all protection." He
advocates "the creation of a united Islamic community from Morocco to
Indonesia."
It should be stressed that Izetbegovic's views are unremarkable from a
traditional Islamic point of view. The final objective is Dar al Islam,
where Muslims dominate and infidelssubmit. That is the meaning of
Izetbegovic's apparent generosity to the non-Muslims, "provided that they
are loyal": the non-Muslims can be "protected persons" only if they
submitted to Islamic domination.
In his daily political discourse Izetbegovic behaved throughout the 1990s
as a de facto nationalist, fostering narrowly-defined Bosniak (i.e.,
Muslim) nationalist feeling and seeking to equate the emerging "Bosniak"
identity with an imaginary supra-ethnic "Bosnia." He was juxtaposing the
construct with the two traditionally Christian communities-Serbs and
Croats-whose loyalties were alleged to lie elsewhere, with Belgrade and
Zagreb respectively. The two sides of Izetbegovic's personality-the deeply
committed Islamist on one hand and the functional nationalist on
another-were not at odds, since within his terms of reference the Bosniak
ethnicity was defined by religion, the Muslim religion.
Izetbegovic should not be blamed for being what he is, nor should his
followers be condemned for subscribing to his outlook: Luther would say
that he and they kann nicht anders. But to have Alija Izetbegovic, with
his record and his vision, as the head of a democratic, pluralist state
anywhere in the world, is simply unthinkable. But for his peculiar vision
to be applied in practice, Bosnia-Herzegovina had to be taken out of
Yugoslavia and proclaimed independent and sovereign.
THE ROAD TO WAR
As the fateful year of 1991 approached, the Serbs would have preferred an
all-Yugoslav referendum based on the principle of "one man-one vote," with
a simple question-"Yugoslavia, Yes or No?"-and with the result binding for
all. While in theory this same principle should have appealed to the
Western democracies, in practice the "international community" appeared to
be too deeply committed to the quasi-federal Titoist framework to question
the assumptions of the secessionist-minded leaders in Croatia and
Slovenia-assumptions that paved the way for disintegration. The
separatists preferred the model of localized, republic-by-republic
elections. Once they were in power, those elections would be followed by
ambiguously worded referenda on independence with de facto preordained
outcomes. This strategy had little to do with "democracy," but it proved
effective in radicalizing political discourse and escalating Yugoslavia's
crisis.
In early 1990 separatist parties had already triumphed in Slovenia and
Croatia. In December of that year Slobodan Milosevic's authoritarian
Socialist Party of Serbia gained a convincing victory in Serbia's
elections. The media in all republics had been busy pursuing openly
nationalist themes, and the politicians followed suit. In December 1990
the Slovenes voted for an "independent and sovereign state," and within
months Slovenia stopped sending conscripts to serve in the federal armed
forces. That same month the Assembly of the Republic of Croatia adopted
the new Constitution-the so-called Christmas Constitution-that defined the
Republic of Croatia as the "nation-state of the Croatian people." The
constituent status of the Serbian people in Croatia was thus abrogated and
the Serbs in Croatia were reduced to the status of a national minority.
Unlike Slovenia, however, Croatia had within its boundaries a large Serb
population that resented being stripped of its status as a constituent
nation. The Serbs had initially favoured the preservation of Yugoslavia,
but in the light of Slovene and Croat moves towards independence they
raised the issue of self-determination. This was specifically related to
the question of adjusting borders between the Yugoslav federal units in
such a way as to allow various Serb communities outside Serbia to remain
attached to it.
Separatist republics are free to go, the Serb argument essentially went,
but they should not be allowed to take areas with a Serb plurality along
with them. Slovenia's and Croatia's declarations of independence (June 25,
1991) were accordingly followed by rather different responses. There was a
short conflict in Slovenia involving the Yugoslav Army, and a sustained
and much bloodier war in Croatia involving local Serbs. Inevitably these
events were bound to have profound consequences on Bosnia.
Izetbegovic's chief concern was to find a pretext for the intended
separation from Yugoslavia-any Yugoslavia-and to use the Croat tactical
alliance in pursuit of that goal; the day of reckoning with the HDZ could
come later. The decision by Izetbegovic to treat Tudjman's bid for
independence as the cue for Bosnia's repeat act was fateful: the moment
that the SDA made it clear that it would not remain in any Yugoslavia
without Croatia, war was inevitable in Bosnia. Izetbegovic was willing to
risk that war. In the 1990 election campaign he said that the Muslims
would "defend Bosnia with arms." In February 1991 he declared in the
Assembly: "I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but
for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty."
To the Serbs this was a war cry. By May Izetbegovic went even further,
saying that the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina probably could not be avoided
because "for a state to be created, for a nation to be forged, it has to
endure this, it is some kind of fate, destiny." This statement echoed his
Islamic fatalism.
KARADZIC AND MILOSEVIC
Over the past two centuries Balkan lands were bargaining chips for
alliance construction. The Bosnian war of 1992-95 confirmed this trend. It
was the most destructive segment of the War of Yugoslav Dissolution. With
no ethnic majority and no "Bosnian" nation, of all six republics of the
old Yugoslav federation the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina had most to
fear from violent secession. Yet once reunited Germany was committed to
the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, the Muslim leader****p in Sarajevo
knew both that the old Yugoslavia was dead and that historic op****tunities
beckoned.
President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, however, played the Bosnian crisis
primarily as a means of consolidating his power in Serbia proper and
extending his influence without committing himself to any clearly defined
strategic objective, such as a "Greater Serbia." By contrast, President
Franjo Tudjman of Croatia did not shed Marxist crocodile tears at the
passing of the old Titoist certainties. Unlike Milosevic he was a true
nationalist. In April 1992 he brought Croatian troops into western
Herzegovina just as Milosevic withdrew the Yugoslav National Army (JNA)
from Bosnia. Furthermore, in a twisted re-enactment of the
chetnik-partisan divide, Milosevic had constantly sought to deepen the
divide between the civilian leader****p in Pale headed by Karadzic, and the
military HQ at Han Pijesak led by General Ratko Mladic.
When the Bosnian Serbs took control of the Serb-majority areas and
connecting corridors in 1992, they were well equipped and officered. But
the numerical advantage lay with the Muslims, who hoped to win in the end
with international help. Radavan Karadzic never understood that this was,
indeed, Izetbegovic's grand strategy, and that time was not on the side of
the Serbs.
In addition Karadzic personally and the Serbs collectively were severely
damaged by the western media handling of their mistreatment of Muslim
prisoners and by their expulsion of non-Serb civilians in the summer of
1992. Similar atrocities by Croats and Muslims against Serbs and against
each other, while no less common, were less conspicuous and deemed
unworthy of attention. The Western elite class chose its sympathies at the
start and kept up an agitation in favor of military intervention against
the Serbs.
Of several peace plans offered or mediated by the Europeans, Karadzic was
under particular pressure-especially from Milosevic in Belgrade-to accept
the Vance-Owen Plan (May 1993) that would have divided Bosnia into ten
"cantons." He initialled its acceptance, but subsequently it was rejected
by the Republika Srpska national assembly. Only months later Muslims
rejected the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan that provided for a confederal model of
three sovereign national entities (December 1993). A vague yet
"non-negotiable" plan presented by the "Contact Group" in 1994 was refused
by the Serbs. It was quietly discarded in early 1995, by which time the
Clinton Administration decided to intervene directly on the Muslim side.
KARADZIC'S COSTLY MISCALCULATIONS
The media call for intervention, launched in its early stage, made the
Bosnian war the subject of international debate to an extent unknown since
Vietnam. Many Europeans were inclined to sup****t a compromise peace, a
federalized Bosnia, and a real arms embargo; whereas the United States
disliked European peace plans, broke the arms embargo starting in late
1993, and overtly sup****ted the Muslims.
In 1992-1993 Karadzic made a fundamental miscalculation that made the war
unwinnable for the Serbs. Ever obsessed with maps, square miles and
territorial percentages to the detriment of strategic planning, he sat on
his advantages and hoped that in the fulness of time the world would
recognize the Serbs' apparent victory. His often repeated adage, "we don't
want to defeat them [Muslims], we want to separate from them," was absurd,
however: the latter could not be effected without securing the former.
Blinkered by his flawed assumptions, Karadzic failed to grasp the tectonic
****ft that took place in January 1994, when the U.S. sponsored a
Croat-Muslim alliance and the Europeans realized that there would be no
settlement unless they surrendered political leader****p to Wa****ngton.
This new stage was inaugurated in February 1994, when a mortar shell fell
on the crowded Markale market in Sarajevo. The Serbs were duly blamed, and
evidence that the shell could not have been fired from Serbian lines
became available too late to affect the subsequent crisis.
From this point the war became a matter of Muslim attempts to exploit the
"safe areas"-in Sarajevo, Gorazde, Tuzla, Bihac, and Srebrenica-which had
been declared by the UN but never demilitarized. In short the Muslims were
allowed to attack out of these areas, but the Serbs were not allowed to
pursue them back in. From spring 1994 on the Muslims could no loger lose
the war, which, in view of their weak starting position, was tantamount to
winning it.
Once treated as a key interlocutor in London, New York, or Geneva, by
early 1995 Karadzic was no longer a player in the big game. In Wa****ngton
Bosnia was seen as an op****tunity to transform NATO from a purely
defensive alliance into an "out-of-area" enforcement agency, thus paving
the way for the Kosovo intervention four years later. The success of the
pro-intervention lobby in the media must be seen in the context of strong
sup****t for their agitation from parts of the U.S. administration.
Russia was the source of Karadzic's constant hopes and repeated
disappointments. Often puzzled by Moscow's supine posture, he kept hoping
that it would "shake itself up." Yet Yeltsin's Russia was weak, eager to
appease the West, and reluctant to exert itself in the Balkan area.
Russian policy began with an almost ideological commitment to accepting
Western good faith, and Russia was slow to grasp that Wa****ngton wanted a
peace settlement based on the defeat of the Serbs. By 1995 informed
Russian opinion was getting alarmed at the direction events were taking,
but it was too late, and too difficult, for the Yeltsin presidency to
devise a new policy.
In the summer of 1995 London and Paris reluctantly agreed to allow NATO to
bomb the Serbs, while the United States reluctantly accepted the sort of
settlement the Europeans had wanted in 1992-3. But the bombing of the
Bosnian Serb army in August 1995, which appeared to end the war, was less
im****tant militarily than the entry of the Croatian Army into Bosnia, now
trained and extensively re-equipped by the U.S. Even this Croatian
intervention was only possible because the Yugoslav army refused to
intervene to save its clients west of the Drina. The war ended because
Milosevic of Serbia wanted it to end.
The chief outcome of the war was a transformed NATO, and the renewal of
American leader****p in Europe to an extent not seen since Kennedy. It
established that America wanted to lead, and to be indispensable, in the
process of European reorganization after 1989. Bosnia itself was not much
affected by international intervention. The war took longer than it would
have done and the Serbian position is more uncertain, but the settlement
that followed Dayton is not unlike a plausible compromise that seemed
within reach in Lisbon in April 1992.
Richard Holbrooke, the chief U.S. negotiator in 1995, boasted a year
later: "We are re-engaged in the world, and Bosnia was the test." This
"we" meant the United States, not "the West" or "the international
community." Indeed, no nation-state started and finished the Bosnian story
as a political actor with an unchanged diplomatic personality. Each great
power became a forum for the global debate for and against intervention,
the debate for and against a certain kind NATO, and an associated,
media-led international political process. The interventionists prevailed
then, and their narrative dominates the public commentary on Karadzic's
arrest now.
VAE VICTIS.
Far from bringing the Bosnian episode to a close, Karadzic's transfer to
The Hague raises an old question that remains unanswered by the
interventionists: If the old Yugoslavia was untenable and eventually
collapsed under the weight of the supposedly insurmountable differences
among its constituent nations, how can Bosnia-the Yugoslav microcosm par
excellence-develop and sustain the dynamics of a viable polity? The answer
will become known only when the outside powers lose their present interest
in upholding the constitutional edifice made in Dayton.
As for the specific charges against Karadzic, we need not hypothesize a
pre-war "joint criminal enterprise" to ethnically cleanse and murder, to
explain the events of 1992-5. The crimes and violations of human rights
that followed were not the direct result of anyone's nationalist project.
These crime, as Susan Woodward notes, "were the results of the wars and
their particular characteristics, not the causes."
The effect of the legal intervention of the "international community" with
its act of recognition was that a Yugoslav loyalty was made to look like a
conspiratorial disloyalty to "Bosnia"-largely in the eyes of people who
supposed ex hypothesi that if there is a "Bosnia" there must be a nation
of "Bosnians." In 1943-4 Tito was able to force the Anglo-Americans to
pretend that his struggle was not communist revolution. In 1992-5
Izetbegovic forced the West to pretend that his jihad was the defense of
"multi-ethnicity." Both pretenses were absurd.
How do they do it, these Balkan political impresarios? The Hague Tribunal
does not recognize the question as legitimate and therefore does not seek
answers. The strange truth is that then, like now, great powers pay a fee
for entering the Balkan casino. They consent to someone's story, not "the
Truth."
Radovan Karadzic will be duly convicted of genocide and crimes against
humanity, and he will not come out of jail alive. The verdict is already
written, but it reflects a fundamental imbalance. It ignores the essence
of the Bosnian war-the Serbs' striving not to be forced into
secession-while remaining mute about the culpability of the other two
sides for a series of unconstitutional, illegitimate and illegal political
decisions that caused the war.
The judgment against Karadzic at the U.S.-sponsored and largely
U.S.-funded tribunal at The Hague will be built on this flawed foundation.
It will be neither fair or just, and therefore it will be detrimental to
what America should stand for in the world. It will also give further
credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Serb viciousness, and
Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global
struggle euphemistically known as "war on terrorism." The former is a
crime; the latter, a mistake.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop
uk
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