War Criminals Must Be Prosecuted

By Michael P. Scharf, for the Boston Herald

Last week President Clinton announced steps America would take to induce the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power. But the ouster of the Yugoslav leader is not enough. He must be brought to justice.

The policy of "ethnic cleansing" has resulted in the murder, torture and rape of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the forced displacement of 5 million people in the Balkans. In contrast to portrayals of the conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo as civil wars with all sides to blame, in reality the perpetrators of atrocities have overwhelmingly been Serbs and the victims overwhelmingly Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians. Nor was the ethnic violence simply an inevitable byproduct of historic hatreds. Rather, it was the handiwork of rabid nationalism generated from the top down. The two leaders responsible for engineering the practice of ethnic cleansing - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Yugoslav President Milosevic - have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

However, Radovan Karadzic remains at large in the Serb-dominated portion of Bosnia. Like a puppet master, he still controls Bosnian Serb politics from behind the scenes, reigning over the Serb warlords who continue to thwart the return of thousands of Muslim refugees to their homes in the Serb-dominated portion of Bosnia. Because "force protection" has been the dominant policy of the NATO forces in Bosnia, NATO has never attempted to apprehend Karadzic, even when he passed through its checkpoints and appeared publicly in areas under its control.

Despite the international indictment against him, Milosevic is still president of Yugoslavia. He still directs a massive police and paramilitary network, which represses opposition. He still controls the television and radio stations, which were responsible for spreading the disease of ethnic nationalism to the Serb people. He continues to command the third largest army in Europe, which poses an ongoing threat to Bosnia, Montenegro and Vojvodina (the other non-Serb semi-autonomous province within Yugoslavia).

The Clinton administration has announced that there are no plans to compel Milosevic's trial at The Hague. What the administration fails to recognize is that indictments alone are meaningless, if there is no prospect of trial and punishment for the accused. The apprehension and trial of these "most wanted" indicted war criminals is critical to achieving lasting peace in the Balkans. Without such action, the Dayton and Kosovo accords will constitute nothing more than a temporary pause in the ethnic conflict; the NATO and U.S. forces will have to remain indefinitely.

Without such action, democracy will never take root and ethnic nationalism will continue to thrive. There will be revenge killings, once again igniting the cycle of violence in the region. And future rogue regimes throughout the world will believe that they, too, have nothing to lose by engaging in such criminal acts.

To bring these genocidal leaders to justice, the United States should pursue the following steps:

** First, the Security Council's economic sanctions against Serbia, lifted in 1995, should be reimposed, and no economic assistance should be provided to rebuild Serbia until Milosevic is surrendered to the International Tribunal and is replaced by a person who is not under indictment by the tribunal.
** Second, the United States should pursue Security Council action (or action coordinated among its allies) to ensure that the assets in foreign banks held by any person indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal (including Karadzic and Milosevic) are immediately frozen.
** Third, U.S. forces operating in Bosnia should be instructed to seek out and apprehend Karadzic, as well as other indicted war criminals.
** Finally, the United States should expand its assistance to the International Tribunal to provide classified information, help with forensic investigations and provide witness protection.

This combination of tactics is necessary to bring both peace and justice to the war-torn region.

Michael P. Scharf is professor of law and director of the Center for International Law and Policy at New England School of Law. He formerly served as attorney-adviser for U.N. Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.