By Francois Clemenceau

At last there is a book- authoritative but not yet translated into English- that answers the tormenting question of why the two most wanted mass murderers of the Yugoslav civil wars have never been brought to justice a decade after international warrants were issued for them. Despite repeated reports of their imminent arrests, the pair – Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who headed the Bosnian Serbs’ army – have managed to elude capture and extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

Multiple explanations have been floated for their apparent untouchable status: for example, were they blackmailing some foreign leaders with embarrassing secrets about their governments’ complicity in stirring up the conflict in Bosnia? But after the Serbian authorities gave up Slobodan Milosevic, the former head of Yugoslavia, to the Hague tribunal (he died there while his long messy trial was still going on), the mystery deepened. What could his two henchmen know that Milosevic didn’t? Year after year, their impunity has marred hopes for closure among the communities who survived the ethnic cleansing and other civilian atrocities in the Yugoslav conflicts – and undermined hopes for stronger international justice on war crimes.

Now an explanation has finally come from an authoritative source – Florence Hartmann, a former official at the Hague tribunal and an experienced journalist in the Balkans. In an unflinching behind-the-scenes account of the manhunt, Peace and Punishment, she shows how the two war criminals benefited from power politics among the very nations that, publicly, were pressing for the success of the Hague tribunal – notably the United States, France, Germany and Britain. Officially, these Western governments were proclaiming their determination to see justice done. But in practice, these same governments often worked at odds with the tribunal, putting a higher priority on their national agendas and broader political goals in the post-war Balkans.

Western governments’ hypocrisy over Bosnian war criminals is bound to raise questions about their determination and solidarity in handling the current crisis in Kosovo. In the current showdown there, the signs point to a more unified Western front behind the need for independence for the province – perhaps via international recognition of a unilateral declaration of independence by the newly-elected Kosovar government. This outcome is bitterly opposed by Belgrade, which claims Serbian sovereignty over the breakaway province must be maintained, and by Moscow, which sees Western support for Kosovo as a step toward enlarging NATO. Washington is ready to support Kosovo’s independence, but there is no guarantee of a united EU stance backing this outcome. Still, this time there seems to be a solid common purpose in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin.

The current outlook is a stark contrast to the same Western governments’ double-talk and maneuvering about Bosnia and its war criminals. On this score, Hartmann makes a compelling case, including detailed accounts of dramatic face-to-face encounters between Western leaders that resulted in vetoes on planned commando raids to apprehend the fugitives. Repeatedly, politics got in the way of justice. For Washington, the overriding priority was preserving relations with Moscow by accepting Russian refusal to see its protégés arrested. European governments had their own goal: keeping the door ajar for Belgrade to bring Serbia into the European Union someday. According to Hartmann, drawing on her special access to these events, European leaders saw this outcome as a way of gradually taming Serbian nationalism and weaning Belgrade away from Russia. In the view of European capitals and of Washington, forcible capture of these notorious fugitives was liable to precipitate an anti-Western outburst, consolidating a “Slavic alliance” between Moscow and Belgrade, and deepening the fissures and instability in the Balkans.

Hartmann’s account is punctuated with dramatic revelations about world leaders’ wheeling and dealing about what the tribunal was allowed to do and the clashes among leaders about key decisions. She recounts one such showdown in 1997 in Paris when President Jacques Chirac was on the point of ordering French troops to capture Karadzic in his hideout in Bosnia. The French plan had backing from Germany and Britain. But it was blocked by President Bill Clinton in a face-to-face meeting with French leaders: Clinton refused to go along with the move without approval from Moscow. Clinton’s condition was tantamount to a veto: Russian President Boris Yeltsin had already warned that he would send a plane to whisk Karadzic to safety ahead of any commando operation to capture him, Hartmann reveals. Later that year, she adds, Yeltsin did have Karadzic flown to Belarus to be kept there, safely out of sight, for the months before and after the November elections that year in Bosnia.

In publishing these revelations, Hartmann, a veteran reporter for the prestigious Paris daily, Le Monde, has to be considered practically unimpeachable as a source: For six years prior to 2006, she was the spokesperson (and confidante) of Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the ICTY, as the Hague tribunal is known.

François Clemenceau is the U.S. bureau chief of Europe 1, the French radio network.

Tags: Book Reviews, ICTY, Kosovo, NATO, Serbia, Yugoslavia

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