Yesterday, virtually every international news organization ran with stories heralding the arrest of indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic. This, after every newspaper in Serbia reported it as fact.
Mind you, every reputable news editor in the world knows that unrepentant nationalists in the Serbian government trade in rumors about his arrest to curry favor with and extract money from the United States and the European Union. Never mind that Serbs truly covet U.S. aid and EU membership – both of which are conditioned on Serbia doing “everything necessary” to apprehend Mladic.
Mladic (along with fellow Serb Radovan Karadzic) is at the top of The Hague’s most wanted list. He is facing a battery of war crimes charges. But the search for Mladic has made NATO forces look like keystone cops and US and European leaders look like willing dupes. Because, it’s been an open secret in Serbia, ever since both men went into hiding over five years ago, that Mladic is being protected by Serb nationalists (probably somewhere in southern Bosnia). Moreover, that they’ve been encouraged to thwart NATO’s efforts to capture him by none other than Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica – who himself has made no secret of his contempt for the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Yet US and EU officials continue to deal with the Serbians as if they’re acting in good faith. Indeed, I ridiculed their folly in this previous article in which I quote US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns – who was announcing a $10 million disbursement because of a “new pledge by Serbia to finally cooperate fully” with the tribunal – as follows:
“My strong impression from my discussions in Belgrade is that the government is working very seriously to find General Mladic and there will be a sincere attempt to capture him or to have him voluntarily surrender and to send him to The Hague…. We are confident that his days in relative freedom are numbered.”
That was over 8 months ago. And, despite Kostunica’s specious assertion yesterday that Mladic’s arrest has been “solved politically” and was now in the “purely technical sphere”, chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte is right to dismiss his assurances as having “no validity whatsoever”.
So, until the next round of “leaks, rumours, and whispers” about his (or Karadzic’s) arrest, Mladic remains a fugitive “still at large.” And he’ll remain at large until Americans and Europeans make it untenable, economically and politically, for Serbs to continue harbouring him.
Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, war crimes, Hague tribunal
Anonymous says
You comparision of Mladic to al Zarqawi is very good. That should help the Americans undertnd why he;s such abad man.