Does Serbia really want Ganic?

March 5, 2010 3 Comments

The arrest of Ejup Ganic in the UK has already been a big success for Serbia. Judging by the fact that I just gave an interview for a Chinese news magazine on the case, the arrest of Ganic has successfully overshadowed the beginning of the Karadzic trial.  The Prosecution in Serbia had opened an investigation into the Dobrovoljacka case in early 2009, but the timing of the arrest now is indicative: The case altogether seems political motivated to show to the domestic audience in Serbia that also non-Serbs are indicted for war crimes. The ICTY in The Hague had investigated the case and did not pursue it. There is furthermore a problem with Serbia indicting Ganic for an alleged war crime committed in Bosnia (which was internationally recognized at the time). While some of the victims were Serbs from Serbia, and Ganic is born in Serbia, the crime is primarily the responsibility of the Bosnian war crimes chamber.

The incident has already had a negative impact on relations between Bosnia and Serbia. This comes after a recent improvement following mediation by Turkey which resulted in both countries again exchanging ambassadors after relations had been managed at the level of charge d’affairs for years after Serbia rejected Bosnia’s candidates for ambassador to Serbia. It also comes after the Serbian president Tadic has reaffirmed Serbia’s support for the territorial integrity of Bosnia, which has been widely seen as an effort to reign in the nationalist statements by Milorad Dodik. Furthermore, there have been discussions in Serbia to pass a resolution in parliament to condemn the genocide in Srebrenica. Finally, the investigation and extradition request undermine the agreement on legal cooperation signed between Serbia and Bosnia just a few days ago. The argeement seeks to put an end to the ability of criminals to escape punishment by crossing the border to Serbia or Bosnia and hiding behind dual citizenship. A lot of this good will and progress created in recent months has been destroyed by the arrest.

More important might be the negative impact on Bosnia itself. The arrest and the case will be welcome ammunition in the election campaign in Bosnia–general elections are due in October: Serb politicians express their dismay at Bosnian state institutions seeking to defend Ganic, while Bosniak politicians accuse Serbia of fighting the same battles as during the war. Thus, it helps to remind of the war and incompatible political goals which will only help nationalists in the elections.

I am not certain that Serbia has the stomach or the will to really try Ganic in court.  The case is weak so either he would be sentenced in a clear mischarage of justice which would undermine internationally the domestic war crimes investigations and Serbia, or he would be released which would undermine the court domestically. Thus, if he is eventually released by the UK, or ‘extradited’ to Bosnia, Serbia has won. The authorities can once more claim that non-Serbs evade justice, but that Serbia tries all it can and that it can get to them even in the UK, not unlike the governments line of argument for Kosovo.

Filed under Bosnia, ICTY, Serbia, UK

The economic crisis, Greece and the Balkans

March 3, 2010 1 Comment

The economic crisis has hit the Western Balkans particularly hard. The region was hit hard in absolute terms, a result of half-hearted economic reforms and the elites denial over the economic crisis reaching the region (a number of government ministers across the region predicted that their country would be spared).
The region was also hit hard psychologically as growth has been sluggish or started from such a low level that the perceived benefits by most citizens are limited. As a result the reservoir of patience is small.

Cover from the German Weekly Focus "The Cheater in the Euro Family"

Who will benefit from the crisis? There are no clear winners or loosers. However, overall populism is likely to gain ground. Good evidence of this is the media exchange between Germany and Greece with German media going for some good old Balkan stereotypes and Greek media dragging out WW2 to counter German criticism of the Greek economy. While for the German media, Greeks are cheating, stealing Balkanites (which of course bodes well for the enlargement of the region), while Greek media like to draw parallels between the EU and NAZI occupation, as in the cartoon from Kathimerini below.

EU inspectors arriving/“Just a sec!” the minister yells and tears his shirt off/Then you see him demonstratively flagellating his bare torso with a rod. Three men are standing next to him in Gestapo uniforms barking “Sehr gut!”.

From Kathimerini: EU Inspectors Arriving (and sounding/looking like the Gestapo)

In Bosnia, it seems to disadvantage the established nationalists, esp. in the Bosniak-Croat Federation, but might help new nationalist/populists, such as the tycoon Radoncic, who recently suggested that non-Bosniaks should not be working for the Federations public broadcaster. In Serbia it is likely to help the populist Progressive Party. While no elections are scheduled in the region this year except for Bosnia, governments are likely to adopt populist policies. At least at the moment, it does not appear that opportunity to clean up the act in terms of inefficient public administration is being seized upon. Unlike in Greece, the unions are mostly weak and fragmented in the region, so paralysis is unlikely to come from the streets.

Altogether the economic crisis motivates political elites to claim political successes on other fronts: Unfortunately, this is unlikely to benefit the resolution of outstanding conflicts, from the name dispute between Greece and Macedonia to the relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

In particular, the prospects of resolving the name issue between Greece and Macedonia seems as remote as ever. While the Papandreou government has been more pragmatic than its predecessor, it seems improbable that it has the courage to move a solution forward in the context of the deep economic crisis and faced with the fact that the leader of the main opposition party, New Democracy, is Antonis Samaras whose hard line over Macedonia called the downfall of the Mitsotakis government in 1993.

The possibly most important aspect of the crisis is the policy of the EU. We have seen a serious erosion of solidarity among current EU members and the economic crisis in Greece is likely to disadvantage the countries of the region: Whether they are members (such as Bulgaria) and are now less likely to be admitted to the Euro-zone to countries in the Western Balkans, who are now likely to be scrutinized more extensively than they would have been before.

Filed under European Union, Greece, Macedonia, Western Balkans

Curb your mens rea

March 1, 2010 1 Comment

After recently returning from an excellent conference at Indiana University on the Milosevic trial and watching the open statement of Radovan Karadzic at The Hague this morning, a number of issues regarding the work of the ICTY and the writing of history of the 1990s come to mind.

As a scholar, the ICTY court records have become a treasure trove of documents and evidence on the events of the 1990s. Thus, even when working on topics not related to the wars, there is much data available which is of interest, from party documents of 1990 to entire books and memoirs. Just like a real treasure trove, the data is hard to find and has to be searched by defendant (for example in the Boskovski case alone there are 1828 statements, documents, etc. available) and if one is not an avid trial watcher it is not easy to know where to find what.

However, beyond the ICTY as a source, how to approach the court as a researcher? First, the ICTY asks different questions than many of us researchers ask. We are often less interested in direct criminal responsibility than in the larger social processes. However, even if we are, the standards of evidence for historians or social scientists are different than in a court. We hardly ever have our sources cross-examined and we accept that evidence and lines of reasoning are challenged later on by colleagues (even if we might not like it) while the court seeks to render a final judgment which will send somebody to prison for years. Thus, the role of scholarship is less about judging and more about assessing. This does not mean moral ambivalence and there is no doubt that scholarship, especially when dealing with Yugoslavia’s disintegration in the 1990s, has to assess responsibility. Scholarship does not need a guilty verdict against Milosevic at the ICTY to identify him to be responsible for much of the war crimes committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. While legitimate questions remain about specific instances, the overall picture is quiet clear.

Here emerges some discomfort: In the Milosevic case, the prosecution paid particular attention to the intention (mens rea), painting a picture of nationalism and commitment to Greater Serbia (a term I don’t find very helpful) to explain the acts perpetrated or ordered by Milosevic, Karadzic et al. Here there is an uneasy relationship between the work of a trial and scholarship. The prosecutor’s role has been to present a clear linear story of ideological commitment and crimes committed in accomplishing this goal. It is a narrative which nicely links motivation to acts. However, as scholar, I feel distinctly uneasy about such a linear narrative. In fact, I am reminded of a very different example from legal practice. Having provided some expert advice on asylum cases, a more experienced colleague told that in verifying the story of a refugees for its veracity key is to look out for inconsistencies and quirks in their story. These are not evidence of problems in their claims, but the opposite. If the narrative of persecution and flight is too straight forward, like it should be, alarm bells should go on. Human life is too complicated and, well, too individual to fit into the large narratives. What applies to refugees is also true for war criminals. It is less their long-hedged master plan which is convincing, but the opportunistic, short-term calculations which motivate crimes. Change and inconsistency rather than a clear strategy.  Furthermore, intention itself is very unsatisfying in a context when ill intent was very wide-spread. The key is who acted on it and who did not. If we take Vuk Draskovic’s statements in 1990 and 1991 (some even earlier), then his intentions appear much more dangerous than those of Milosevic and others. The commitment towards extreme nationalism, the hate speech towards other nations left little doubt about his intentions. Still, following a short engagement of his party’s paramilitaries in Croatia, he stopped supporting the war effort and became one of its main critics (more so than for example the currently governing DS in Serbia).

The current indictment against Karadzic and the opening statement by the prosecutor are largely encouraging in this regard as it does indeed focus on the crimes and not so much on the political pre-history. In court today, Karadzic tried to turn the prosecution’s case around by constructing a narrative of mens rea of the leadership of Slovenia, Croatia, the Bosnian Muslims and Croats and taking points from the prosecutions case and turning them around to replace his name with others. While the result was often a familiar conspiracy theory and distortion of historic events, there are legitimate disputes and conflicting arguments about the motivation to establish nation states and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The fact that Slovenia and Croatia sought to leave Yugoslavia was understandable in the context at the time and there is certainly nothing to justify the use of force, but there are serious and legitimate political disputes at the heart of the Yugoslav conflict before it turned violent to which there is often no clear cut answer of right and wrong.

Thus, while the ICTY can contribute to the writing of history by disclosing chains of command, I am much more skeptical about the larger, linear narratives of mens rea which seem to run against the subtleties which scholarship has to identify.

Filed under Bosnia, Croatia, ICTY, Kosovo, Serbia