Radovan Karadzic
Acquiescence or Complicity in Genocide Comes with Addresses & Names As do the Actual Perpetrators
Will The Hague War Crimes Tribunal Ever Deliver A Complete Historical Record and Justice?
That there was a premeditated decision to betray Srebrenica, along with Zepa and Gorazde, should no longer surprise even as it still offends. The Hague Tribunal, (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, or “ICTY”), and the International Court of Justice, “ICJ,” have already ruled that the murders committed against the citizens of Bosnia & Herzegovina, particularly Srebrenica, are genocide. The actual perpetrators of this crime including Milosevic and Mladic have been identified and indicted by the ICTY. Karadzic will stand trial, presumably beginning this week.
What remains shrouded in a fog of smoke and mirrors is the responsibility and delivery of a complete historical record as well as justice for acquiescence in the betrayal. Books and authoritative articles, (by such authors as Samantha Power, Sylvie Matton and Adam LeBor), have actually referenced terms as “by standers,” “acquiescence,” and even “complicity with genocide” in describing the role of the big powers. It is the policy that is most often judged guilty, while the political and diplomatic leaders who initiated and carried it out continue to avoid accountability even as some write self-serving books extolling the virtues of their deeds.
“Deal” or Reckless Scheme
Sir Geoffrey Nice, (the lead prosecutor of the ICTY in the Milosevic case), while being interviewed by the BBC, has asserted the need to investigate the possibility of “complicity” in allowing the safe areas to be overrun by Mladic. The accusation is not that those who premeditated the betrayal of Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde, (the three United Nations “safe areas” and NATO “protected zones”), are guilty of direct conspiracy in the mass killings. That was not part of the “deal” or scheme implicit or explicit, yellow or green light given to Milosevic and Mladic to satisfy the latters’ territorial and political demands to come to the negotiating table, ultimately in Dayton in November of 1995. Nonetheless, they, (the international mediators in question), were reckless, perhaps even criminally, particularly in dealing with the lives of the citizens of these three towns with whose safety they were entrusted by mandate of the UN, NATO and even the Government of BiH. If this crime were a fatal automobile accident, not even a premeditated scheme, in London, Paris, Moscow or Washington, there already would have been a formal investigation. Judicial consequences might have already followed, at least in terms of openly identifying those responsible and further examining the conduct of those who were acquiescent or complicit: who is the “they” who steered the fate of the enclaves “protected residents” into the hands of a demonstrated mass killer and by what rationale. This is how the “rule of law” translates into practice. Otherwise, that term is only empty, or worse, disheartening rhetoric.
The “they” is not merely a flawed policy. “They” have an address and names.
A Mandate Yet to be Faithfully Executed
The Hague Tribunal was established to deliver justice and the historical record related to the crimes, (grave violations of international humanitarian law), committed during the conflict(s) in the lands of the former Yugoslavia. This United Nations Security Council, (UNSC), mandate shaped and adopted during my tenure as BiH’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN on behalf of the Republic of BiH, was not limited by either time or the nationality of those who might be investigated or prosecuted. Certainly there is no limiting of scope to the actions of the leaders or citizens of the former Yugoslav states alone. Nonetheless, it appears to many that the Tribunal has been steered clear of investigations that might expose culpability that is reflective on the big powers or potentially embarrassing, perhaps inconvenient.
And we should here remind of another mandate adopted by both the UNSC and NATO: to make Srebrenica, Zepa, Gorazde and three other BiH population centers into “safe areas” protected by UN peacekeepers on the ground and ultimately shielded by NATO air power from above, “protected zones”. While such mandate may have been made moot in the eyes of some when Srebrenica and Zepa were overrun, the basic legal responsibility cannot be extinguished until the UN and NATO complete an objective investigation as to whether these “safe areas” were undermined by premeditated and/or reckless action.
Netherlands’ Peacekeepers in Enclave Also Abandoned by Allies?
From almost the date of Srebrenica and Zepa’s fall, I have questioned and asked for answers. Then Dutch Defense Minister Jorvis Voorhoeve has now also put his suspicions clearly on the record, on the side of those demanding answers, (from October 22, 2009 BBC interview of Mr. Voorhoeve linked below):
“I know from intelligence sources that there were already Serb decisions to take the three Eastern enclaves among which was Srebrenica. Those decisions were taken probably in May and June – two months before.”
Joris Voorhoeve further alleges that the international community knew the attack was coming.
“Two security council members had knowledge that the attack was coming. I’m not saying they had knowledge the attack would be followed by mass murder. In any case they did not do anything with this knowledge.”
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On the eve before Srebrenica was to fall, I met with then Defense Minister Voorhoeve as well as then Foreign Minister Hans van Mierlo to urge them to confront the oncoming Serbian onslaught, (intelligence of which Voorhoeve had shared with me some weeks before). The Dutch UN peacekeeping troops in Srebrenica had to rely upon NATO air power to fend off any attack by Serbian military vastly superior in ground troops and weapons. (The local defense forces were largely disarmed with their heavy weapons placed under UN control). Of course, both the Srebrenica residents and Dutch peacekeepers were dependent upon a reliable response by UN and NATO commanders to turn the “dual key” launching the nearby NATO planes.
Staying in almost hourly communication, the night before the fall Voorhoeve called to inform me that he had in fact formally demanded NATO air support. He also announced the same decision to his Dutch citizens over live TV broadcast. The NATO air strikes never came, and the most critical question as to why not has never been answered for the benefit of the UN’s and NATO’s credibility as well as justice and the rights of the victims. Voorhoeve also claims that no credible answer has been provided:
“Why were his calls for air strikes the night before ignored? And why was there no action taken more than a month previously, when – according to Mr. Voorhoeve – the Serbs’ intentions to attack were known? (Same BBC interview linked below).
The Prosecutor Demands Access to Evidence
(From BBC Interview linked below):
“The Karadzic trial may well be the last opportunity to examine the issues of Srebrenica at the top level in a forensic setting. That’s why it’s a very important trial.” Sir Geoffrey Nice was the chief prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the criminal tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. That trial ended without conclusion in 2004 when Milosevic died in jail.
So although Milosevic was charged with genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, his culpability from his base in Belgrade has never officially been proved.
For Sir Geoffrey, four years studying the case raised other unanswered questions. “The role of what’s called the West, the degree to which the West was complicit in the takeover of the enclaves – including Srebrenica. There’s no suggestion that the West was aware in advance that there was going to be a massacre, but they may have been aware in advance that there was going to be a takeover because the enclaves were no longer capable of being kept. And the very fact of their knowledge in light of what happened may be an embarrassment that leads to a desire not to allow that detail out.”
Demanding Answers and Meeting Obfuscation
For more than the last decade, first through legal channels and then through the media I have identified four international political/military leaders who must stand in line first in properly being asked questions regarding their beforehand knowledge and responses to the Serbian preparations for attack and the gradual execution of such. These individuals had direct legal responsibility to the UN, NATO and/or EU, but also to the victims and the BiH state:
• Bernard Janvier, French General and then UN military commander for UN peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia, UNPROFOR;
• Asushi Akashi, UN civilian chief for UNPROFOR;
• Richard Holbrooke, United States State Department Under-Secretary and assuming responsibility for SE Europe; and
• Carl Bildt, EU appointed mediator and former Swedish PM.
Demanding Answers Already A Decade Earlier
Below is copy of Associated Press story when a decade earlier I had publicly put forward the prospect of the betrayal of Srebrenica and Zepa and need to question the key international players and provide more complete credible answers:
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“July 11, 2000
Negotiator Implicated in Massacre
Filed at 10:06 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Bosnia’s U.N. ambassador implicated top international negotiator Carl Bildt on Tuesday in the failure to defend the U.N. “safe haven” of Srebrenica.
Bildt countered that Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey’s recollection of their meeting on July 11, 1995, as Srebrenica was falling was wrong. And he reiterated that the U.N. Security Council was primarily to blame for not providing enough troops to defend the enclave in eastern Bosnia.
Starting on that fateful July 11, just a few months before the end of the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, which was designated a U.N.-protected zone. When the slaughter was finished, as many as 8,000 men and boys older than 14 were missing.
At a symposium Tuesday to mark the anniversary and discuss Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s 155-page report on the massacre issued in November, Sacirbey for the first time described what he called “a reprehensible meeting” with Bildt as the Bosnian Serbs were overrunning Srebrenica.
Sacirbey, who at the time was Bosnia’s foreign minister, recalled that Bildt told him on July 11 there were no plans to defend or liberate Srebrenica or defend Zepa. The smaller, less-protected U.N. “safe haven” fell to the Serbs days later.
Bildt, who wrote about a meeting with Sacirbey in his book about Bosnia, said in a telephone interview from Sweden that Sacirbey’s “rather sensational information” is “somewhat strange.”
“And I can say it’s wrong because I was there … If any of this were remotely true, it would have been well-known and documented by now,” he said.
Sacirbey told the symposium that a few days before the Bosnian Serbs attacked Srebrenica, Bildt met Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic in Belgrade. At the time, Bildt was representing the “Contact Group” that oversees the Balkans: the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
“I don’t know what happened at that meeting,” Sacirbey said, but he speculated that the prospect of imminent attacks on Srebrenica and Zepa were mentioned and Bildt didn’t object, which was viewed as a green light.”
Bildt, who is now Annan’s Balkans envoy, said his meeting in Belgrade dealt almost entirely with a possible cease-fire. Srebrenica was mentioned only in a discussion about trying to get supplies to the beleaguered enclaves, he said.”
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Character Assassinations and Appealing to Islamophobia
Over the years, Holbrooke, Akashi and Bildt have not provided answers or even been formally questioned. General Janvier has opted to claim silence, mostly. When confronted with the facts they have at various times provided non-plausible, incomplete or frequently contradictory explanations.
Most recently, Bildt has chosen to try to deflect the allegations by claiming that I am a “criminal, an embezzler who has been making the same allegation for over 10 years.” Putting aside the now dedicated effort to smear my credibility, Bildt at least has admitted that my allegations have been the same for well over a decade. I may be consistent in telling lies according to him. Bildt has been in the least revealed as telling the truth inconsistently.
Anyway, this cannot be answered by promoting spurious allegations directed at me and for whatever purpose. It cannot also be rationalized by trying to redefine the conflict as a “civil war,” or by promoting the notion of cause to “age old ethnic hatreds.” Holbrooke has even tried to repaint his “historic” role in the context of today’s Islamophobia claiming in a Washington Post Editorial that: if it was not for his success in securing “the Dayton Accords, the 9/11 terrorist attacks would have come from BiH rather than Afghanistan.” With one phrase Holbrooke had tried to transform the Bosnian/Herzegovinians’ struggle to preserve a multi-ethnic society and stave off genocide into his success in confronting Islamic radicalism in BiH.
“Sacrificing Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa:” In his own words
This may explain the following apparent admission. Richard Holbrooke celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Dayton Accords spoke on TV of having “instructions to sacrifice Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa.”
“Srebrenica is a great tragedy which should not have been permitted to occur. But it did, and I tell you that I was under initial instructions to sacrifice Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa, and I felt that was wrong. I look forward to the day when Srebrenica is fully back in the hands of its original inhabitants who are Moslem.” When asked whether it was the town which was to be sacrificed or the population, he replied “both”. (BBC interview linked includes this 2005 video clip as well).
Having been caught in the tide of his own words, Holbrooke has offered now several explanations. They are neither convincing nor consistent. Some provide further contradictions and the necessity for an independent review of the facts and access to the evidence without such being selectively provided, in many instances by the very governments, including US, UK and France, now implicated by actions of their representatives in the Srebrenica and Zepa betrayal:
Documents not Made Available to Deliver Justice
(From same BBC interview linked below):
Sir Geoffrey Nice believes the answers may lie in partly blacked out documents which he saw when prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic, but which the court in The Hague has ruled must remain secret.
“All those interested in the topic need access to the best material and that’s been denied them by Serbia in its calculated use of the Yugoslavian tribunals procedures to block production of documents, and then to avoid those documents being made available publicly.”
The Most Revealing Case of Zepa
Zepa was the second enclave to be overrun, July 25, 1995, two weeks after Srebrenica had fallen. On July 21, 1995, these big powers responsible for effecting the UN and NATO mandates for the “safe areas” and “protected zones” including Zepa had met in London. Faced with initial evidence of mass killings by Mladic’s forces in and around Srebrenica, they issued a statement that they would defend Gorazde in case of assault, the third enclave not yet ethnically cleansed by Milosevic’s, Mladic’s and Karadzic’s forces. No such commitment though was confirmed for Zepa as was due under both UNSC and North Atlantic Council (NATO) resolutions.
By this silence, Mladic understood this signal as a green light to launch the assault. Consequently, whatever the rationale for such, it’s incontrovertible that there was a “premeditated decision” to allow the Serbian forces to overrun this UN and NATO “safe area/protected zone” with forseeability of the resulting casualties. Zepa was betrayed by a decision documented by its non-mention in London 4 days before it was to be overrun.
Gorazde was on Sacrificial Altar to Milosevic, as well
In trying to explain his filmed statement that he had “instructions to sacrifice Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa” Holbrooke’s latest rationalization is that he was speaking of Gorazde only:
“As the negotiations were being launched in August 1995, some in the U.S. government argued that we should be prepared to push the Sarajevo government to give up the remaining UN safe area – Gorazde – as part of a peace deal. I rejected that proposal, and said that “such a trade is no longer possible…after Srebrenica, we cannot propose such a thing”. (On same BBC program linked below).
Even if we are to accept this explanation by Holbrooke, which is flawed for several reasons, it is not true at least as far as he claims that he rejected such instructions. He tried to deliver Gorazde to Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic making them the central part of his negotiating demands directed at me as then BiH Foreign Minister.
In early August of 1995, I was the first BiH official, as Bosnian Foreign Minister, to meet with Holbrooke and “his team” in Split, Croatia on the US State Department plane that had landed a few hours earlier. Holbrooke then proceeded for the first hour, (of our hour and a half meeting), to convince me that the government I represented, in Sarajevo, should swap Gorazde. If he “rejected” the proposal to trade Gorazde as he now claims, it must have been only after I was steadfast about not agreeing to any such scheme.
In hindsight, I understood Holbrooke’s pressure upon me to swap Gorazde as his final effort to deliver Gorazde to Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic, as was part of the implicit or explicit arrangement, “deal,” to get Milosevic to the Dayton negotiating table.
In Dayton, Srebrenica & Zepa
Were Deemed Non-Negotiable in Milosevic’s Favor
However, the more important questions to ask regarding this relation of the facts:
If the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa were not desirable in Holbrooke’s eyes then why should Gorazde have been considered at all in any scheme to swap such to Belgrade and Pale?
If Srebrenica and Zepa had not been already “sacrificed” to Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic, then why did not Holbrooke and Bildt press Belgrade and Pale to return such enclaves to the Sarajevo Government during subsequent negotiations? Rather, in Dayton we, (the Sarajevo Government including Dr. Haris Silajdzic, Ivo Komsic, Miro Lazovic and myself as well as President Izetbegovic), were pressured that if we insisted upon the return of Srebrenica and Zepa, the talks would fail with us held responsible for such.
Allow Justice & History to Judge the Evidence, All of It!
As witness before The Hague Tribunal, I had access to “secret documents.” By the rules of the Tribunal, I’m not allowed to speak of the contents, the evidence of such documents lest I be held for contempt or perhaps my testimony ignored in a very critical trial. (I testified over a period of 40 days). Florence Hartmann has already been “convicted” of contempt of court for purportedly revealing “secrets” which were defined to include the judicial deliberations that prevented such documents from being made available to a sister court, (the International Court of justice, hearing BiH’s claim against Belgrade for violation of the “Genocide Convention”).
Former Defense Minister Jorvis Voorhoeve claims on camera that he is “not allowed” to identify the two Permanent UN Security Council members who had advance knowledge of Belgrade’s plans and preparations for the pending assault(s).
As lead prosecutor in the Milosevic case, Sir Geoffrey Nice is not only prevented from publicly discussing the “secret” evidence, but it appears that even he was denied access to retracted material, a standard not entirely in line with the rule of law as applied in the avowed “western democracies.”
Justice, the rule of law, the credibility of shared institutions such as the United Nations, NATO, the International Court of Justice as well as the ICTY itself, demands that a proper investigation be undertaken pursuing the evidence at the addresses and asking questions long left unanswered of “they”, real persons and not just amorphous policy.
For my part, I have relayed these facts before including to investigators of the ICTY, United Nations and the Netherlands, in regards to what I knew at such time. More evidence becomes known over time even as some would look to bury it in blacked out documents, character assassinations or merely the tall wall of bureaucratic arrogance.
When Justice Conflicts with Job Security
The betrayal and killings of Srebrenica and Zepa occurred during my watch as BiH Foreign Minister. I still have an obligation to expose the truth, for the victims and justice, as a Bosnian but also as an American. I relate them here again to be reviewed in the context of a more comprehensive writing for the readers’ evaluation. There are of course many other potentially relevant details that I will relate in the context of an investigation by the ICTY. The BiH Prosecutor’s Office could also pursue such investigation, but there is no such will, courage or desire. (While many of the BiH judges and prosecutors may be true to the pursuit of justice and the rule of law, unfortunately some are appointed and paid by the very institutions, including the US State Department, which might come under scrutiny.)
The acquiescence in the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa should not be allowed to now transform into a betrayal of justice and the rule of law and into a revisionist historical record. Those who would co-opt the rule of law and claim history as their own tool share addresses and names with those who should answer questions demanded by justice regarding acquiescence or perhaps even complicity.
