Morton Abramowitz And Daniel Serwer

Fourteen years after the massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in Bosnia, the perpetrator of the largest atrocity in Europe since World War II, indicted war criminal Gen. Ratko Mladic, still roams free. Worse still, if the recent anniversary of the massacre -- which garnered little notice in European countries and the United States -- as well as recent diplomatic signals are any indication, Europe and the U.S. seem ready to effectively turn the page on his arrest. 

This is surprising, because while the instruments of international accountability are slow and cumbersome, they are beginning to demonstrate the capacity to deliver justice once indictees are delivered into custody. Liberia's former President Charles Taylor is on trial for war crimes committed in Sierra Leone; verdicts have been rendered in Rwanda; Radovan Karadzic, the war-time leader of Bosnia's Republika Srpska, is on trial in The Hague; Yugoslavia's former President Slobodan Milosevic died while on trial there; and Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.

Yet in the case of Mladic, where Western resolve is being tested, the United States and Europe are simply not doing all they can to ensure that international justice gets a chance to fill its internationally mandated task. 

Both Serbia's own prosecutors and those at the Hague Tribunal have stated publicly that Mladic is in Serbia, likely still under the protection of a network of members or former members of the Serbian security forces. Serbian officials have now even admitted such was the case for a decade after the Srebrenica massacre. Karadzic, Mladic's political counterpart, was arrested in Serbia last year, where he had posed as an alternative-medicine guru for a decade. Less than 24 hours passed between the decision to arrest him and the operation carrying it out. No one can be certain that Mladic -- who led the Bosnian Serbs under Belgrade's command during the war -- is as easily within Belgrade's grasp. But if the Serbian official in charge of relations with the Hague Tribunal believes that to be the case, why shouldn't we?

Belgrade nevertheless has repeatedly asked the U.S. and EU to accept something short of Mladic's arrest as evidence of full cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. Doing so would enable Serbia to take full advantage of a "stabilization and association" agreement, already signed with the EU, that would give Serbia many economic benefits of EU membership before achieving it.

The EU would long ago have dropped its insistence on Mladic's arrest were it not for the Dutch, whose troops were at Srebrenica under U.N. command when the massacre occurred. Washington has supported the Dutch, long insisting on Mladic's arrest and his departure for The Hague.

The Americans are now apparently looking for some way out of the impasse over Mladic. So far, no change in policy on requiring Serbia to capture and send Mladic to The Hague has been announced. But in Washington and in European capitals, the U.S. government is radiating signals that it wants to simply accept the Serbian government's claims that it is doing its best to find Mladic, and therefore should not suffer the consequences of his eluding them.

What the Americans hope to achieve by effectively reducing the likelihood of arresting Mladic is not clear. We know of few, if any, cases in which giving in to intransigence in the Balkans has produced results. The Bush administration dropped the condition that Mladic go to The Hague in 2006 before Serbia could enter NATO's Partnership for Peace program. It based its decision on the idea that removing the conditionality would encourage greater Serbian flexibility on Kosovo's final status. The move utterly failed.

Dropping the requirement that Mladic go to The Hague will do nothing to change Serbian policy. Indeed, it would reward Serbian obstinacy and significantly lessen pressures on Serbia to reform its internal security services, which remain unreconstructed since the time of Milosevic. It would also encourage continued support of Mladic among Serbs, while discouraging those Serbs who have pressed for Mladic's capture and who seek change in Belgrade's security sector. And it would undermine the Dutch, whose impressive determination on this issue, alone among EU members, has -- until now -- stemmed the European tide.

Some would argue that Belgrade genuinely does not know where Mladic is, or that we need to go easy on Serbia to strengthen reform-minded politicians there. Those were not arguments we credited when the Croatians made them for one of their generals, now on trial in The Hague. We should not credit them for Serbia. True reformers in Belgrade want to see Mladic on trial. Given the rapid apprehension of Radovan Karadzic after the decision to arrest him and his support network in Serbia, it is hard to believe that Mladic, too, is not easily within Belgrade's grasp. 

The American government should remain true to its repeatedly stated commitment to do everything possible to bring indicted war criminals to justice, and continue to insist that the Serbian government send Mladic to The Hague.

Morton Abramowitz is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. Daniel Serwer is a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace. Both are former foreign service officers with extensive on-the-ground experience in the Balkans. The views expressed here are their own.

Photo: Wall of names at the Potocari genocide memorial near Srebrenica (Photo by Michael Büker, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License). 

Source: WORLD POLITICS REVIEW18 SEP 2009

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