by hilzoy
From the NYT:
“Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt.
Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, hailed the arrest as an important step in bringing to justice one of the architects of Europe’s worst massacre since World War II. He said Mr. Karadzic, 63, the Bosnian Serb president during the war there between 1992 and 1995, would be transferred to The Hague in “due course.”
“This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade,” Mr. Brammertz said. “It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.” (…)
It came just weeks after a new pro-Western coalition government in Serbia was formed whose overriding goal is to bring Serbia into the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc. The European Union has made delivering indicted war criminals to The Hague a precondition for Serbia’s membership.
The arrest was hailed by Western diplomats as proof of Serbia’s determination to link its future to the West and put the virulent nationalism of the past behind it. The capture under the stewardship of the new government has particular resonance because the government is made up of an unlikely alliance between the Democrats of Mr. Tadic and the Socialist Party of Mr. Milosevic, which fought a war against the West in the 1990s, but has now vowed to bring Serbia back into the Western fold. (…)
The former leader is charged with genocide for the murder of close to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. The indictment charges that Mr. Karadzic also committed genocide, persecutions and other crimes when forces under his command killed non-Serbs during and after attacks on towns throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, rounded up thousands of non-Serbs and transferred them to camps set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities.
The charges state that forces under Mr. Karadzic’s command killed, tortured, mistreated, and sexually assaulted non-Serbs in these camps.
Further, he is charged with responsibility for the shelling and sniping of civilians in Sarajevo, during the 43-month siege of the city, which led to the killing and wounding of thousands, including many women and children.”
I have to assume that people like Karadzic assume that they can act with impunity; that they will never have to answer for what they did in a court of justice, or face the prospect of punishment. It matters immensely that they be proven wrong.
Now that’s some very welcome news.
I want my *own* war crimes trials for Christmas. Or my birthday next summer.
*sulks*
I think there’s a subtext to what you’re saying, and I agree.
This is the best news I’ve heard in some time. Which says something both about the goodness of this news and the badness of the news generally.
Anybody here remember Franjo Tuđman?
“I have to assume that people like Karadzic assume that they can act with impunity; that they will never have to answer for what they did in a court of justice, or face the prospect of punishment. It matters immensely that they be proven wrong.”
Yeah, 13 years later after a shameful contemporary period in which foreign powers wouldn’t even use the word “genocide”, preferring instead the abhorrent “ethnic cleansing”. Predicated, of course, on the fact that the Genocide Act makes action mandatory wherever genocide is acknowledged as taking place.
The fact that Serbia has finally decided that surrendering these guys is less of a blow than not being invited to join the EU makes your argument even more specious (unfortunately) – the lesson Mugabe, the Burmese junta or Bush should take from this is of course, “you will be safe as long as your country remains insular and free of oil”
Anybody here remember Franjo Tuđman?
Yes; he used to be president of Croatia during the Yugoslav wars. Died some years ago – unfortunately before he was indicted for ordering war crimes in Bosnia.
I have to assume that people like Karadzic assume that they can act with impunity; that they will never have to answer for what they did in a court of justice, or face the prospect of punishment. It matters immensely that they be proven wrong.
Hmmm… as before, that works if you replace “Karadzic” with Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, etc. etc. and, sadly, etc.
The fact that Serbia has finally decided that surrendering these guys is less of a blow than not being invited to join the EU makes your argument even more specious (unfortunately)
I disagree with this.
It’s not a perfect world. You apply the levers that are available. You don’t win them all. So, you win the ones you can.
It’s true, some bastards die at home in their beds at a ripe old age. Karadzic likely will not.
Works for me.
Thanks –
As secular people we are robbed of the possibility to reasonably dig up the corpses and charge them with crimes committed while alive as in this example.
You write:
I’m not at all certain that I agree. For one thing, Karadzic is not Milosevic. We have every indication that he truly believed the caustic hatred he espoused, and was not simply manipulating nationalist passions for private gain. One of the remarkable things about belief is its power to disturb normal calculations of cost and benefit. Many people are perfectly willing to make great sacrifices to advance their beliefs; it’s not at all clear to me that punishment, however severe, acts as a meaningful deterrent in such cases.
Then there’s the normal problem with deterrence – it assumes that criminals believe that there exists a reasonable chance that they will be apprehended and held to account. I don’t think Karadzic thought he was going to lose. And, as it turns out, he had good reason to believe that even if he lost, he wouldn’t lose the loyalty of his supporters – it enabled him to avoid justice for thirteen years, and might well have shielded him indefinitely.
In other words, I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence at all to the effect that war crimes trials act as much of a deterrent on conduct. At best, their effects seem to have been marginal – war criminals are somewhat less likely than the Nazis to meticulously document their crimes, and sometimes take pains to ensure that everything is enacted at a decent remove. But slaughter proceeds around the world. Arresting Milosevic or Taylor hasn’t stopped Mugabe or al-Bashir.
I simply don’t believe that even a perfectly efficient justice system is capable of deterring all crime; and it’s quite clear that a system as imperfect as the one that presently governs sovereign abuses isn’t much of a deterrent at all. So the reason to catch and try Karadzic isn’t that it’s likely to prevent future tragedies. We shouldn’t allow ourselves the false comfort of that illusion – that though we failed to act expeditiously enough to stay Karadzic’s hand, at least we’re now acting to prevent a recurrence of his atrocities. That’s a hollow claim. We need to catch and try these criminals because it is right, because it is just that we do so. Because the moral obligation to hold them to account falls upon us. And then we need to engage in strong, proactive measures to discourage the elevation of racist, genocidal figures to positions of power and authority; to seek to force them from office when they attain it; and to act more swiftly to remove them when they start to enact their mad schemes. Figures like Karadzic respect power. It is the only language they speak. They will restrain themselves when they are forced to, and not out of fear that one day the world may get around to forcing them.
When I saw the first headlines for this story elsewhere, I thought they were talking about Bush et. al. And then I got a sort of sick feeling that I’d think of the President of the United States first when a war crimes arrest was made. Proud to be an American? Not now. Maybe later.
Getting your alternative therapies from a genocidal maniac
Paul Sims of the New Humanist blog on the capture of Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals, after 13 years on the lam:We were interested to learn that genocidal fugitive-turned-prisoner Radovan Karadzic has been practising alte…
Many people are perfectly willing to make great sacrifices to advance their beliefs; it’s not at all clear to me that punishment, however severe, acts as a meaningful deterrent in such cases.
No evidence for what you’re saying. Plenty of evidence in the other direction. Karadzic was not slaughtering people at ‘great sacrifice’ to himself.
In other words, I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence at all to the effect that war crimes trials act as much of a deterrent on conduct.
There’s not much evidence at all from Int’l war crimes trials, because it’s a pretty new idea, and there is no real consistency in Int’l law application, etc.
I simply don’t believe that even a perfectly efficient justice system is capable of deterring all crime;
Are you therefore arguing for the elimination of the Law, since even a ‘perfectly efficient’ (‘efficient’?) justice system is not capable of deterring all crime?
and it’s quite clear that a system as imperfect as the one that presently governs sovereign abuses isn’t much of a deterrent at all.
No, it’s not ‘quite clear’ – you’ve merely asserted it in your previous paragraph. And in fact, deterence per se is not the only goal here. A couple arguments on this thread cite, essentially, the ambiguity of the situations in question (Bosnia, et al.) as a problem. Some proponents of some kind of Int’l law would agree with that: the very act of drawing a line is hugely clarifying, for everyone involved.
Observer: “I simply don’t believe that even a perfectly efficient justice system is capable of deterring all crime; and it’s quite clear that a system as imperfect as the one that presently governs sovereign abuses isn’t much of a deterrent at all. So the reason to catch and try Karadzic isn’t that it’s likely to prevent future tragedies.”
I think this is a straw man. In order to prevent “future tragedies” — some, not all — we don’t need to “deter all crime”. That would be impossible, and if no attempt to deter crime was worth undertaking if it didn’t deter all crime, then I suppose we should just sit back and wait for God to administer the only 100% infallible and effective justice there could possibly be.
Deterring some crime is enough.
In other words, I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence at all to the effect that war crimes trials act as much of a deterrent on conduct.
The fact that Karadzic was in hiding for over a decade might be evidence to the contrary.
sounds like hilzoy liked the Dark Knight..
joker: haven’t seen it yet, though I will tonight.
Life in hiding.
Not too bad, really:
This doesn’t sound like terrible suffering was involved.
Both Hilzoy and jonnybutter respond to my argument by suggesting that the perfect ought not be the enemy of the good. That misconstrues my point.
I’m not advancing a case for inaction. Quite the contrary. I think that we need a vigorous international system for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and wrote as much. I’m delighted that Karadzic will finally be brought to justice.
And it’s precisely for that reason that I object, strongly, to Hilzoy’s assumption that bringing international criminals who thought they could act with impunity to justice will ultimately serve to deter future malefactors. Such a position implies that the ICC and similar institutions can serve an important preventitive role. That by subjecting the conduct of sovereign actors to binding legal standards, we can restrain abuses. I’m not, of course, willing to rule that out entirely. Establishing clear rules, obtaining strong international cooperation, and holding criminals to account can only serve to have positive effect.
My point is that the effect is always likely to be, at best, marginal. Or, phrased differently, that even an ideal International Criminal Court will always have a full docket. The problem is that the legal system springs into action only after a crime has been committed. And, given the complications of dealing with state actors, international institutions tend to act only when the conduct has been particularly egregious. Worse yet, no one has yet conceived an effective means of the ICC sanctioning leaders who retain power. So it’s not, for example, unreasonable to suppose that Sudan’s al-Bashir might negotiate immunity for his crimes as a precondition for a peace deal. (Isn’t that, effectively, what Qaddafi has done? What Arafat did?) Or, alternatively, that should he retain power until the end of his life, he would never be held to account. Add that up, and leaders can be confident that their less-than-egregious crimes will go unpunished. That they can get off the hook, provided they have something of value to offer in return. That if they can retain power, they can stay out of trouble. So there are any number of reasons for leaders to believe that they can act revoltingly, and die peacefully. Do you think the ICC keeps Kim Jong-Il up at night? Fidel Castro? Or, to choose a particularly provocative example, any of the past several generations of Chinese leaders, who have ordered the violations of the human rights (and even the deaths) of their own people?
So if you view its principle value as a deterrent, the ICC is hardly worth the effort. But of course, that’s not its sole purpose. When it tries and convicts criminals, it can contribute to the healing of their native lands. It offers justice to the victims. It prevents those with blood on their hands from walking free. All of these are worthy objectives in their own right. And if it has a deterrent effect, so much the better.
My great fear is that, in our rush to establish the universality of human rights and to strengthen these legally-oriented international institutions, we will neglect those mechanisms that might actually prevent slaughters before they can happen, in favor of those that simply punish their instigators after the fact. Europe, the great bastion of this new legal regime, has enervated its military forces. It spends less than half as much of its GDP on defense as the US, and only a tiny fraction of what forces it retains are capable of being deployed abroad. It essentially lacks any expeditionary capability, absent American logistical support. In fact, should the United States decline to act to forcibly depose a genocidal ruler, or to restrain a murderous regime, the rest of the world is all but incapable of acting without it. Witness the disgrace of the African Union in Sudan. And, as we now know all too well, the international community is equally incapable of imposing meaningful economic sanctions. The regimen pressed on Iraq was a dismal failure, corrupting the institutions charged with its enforcement, and serving only to strengthen the regime in relation to its populace. And all the while, nations that spotted economic opportunity made a mockery of the UN resolutions. So what, exactly, will all the laws and courts in the world do to protect innocent victims from a government bent on their murder? Ask the people of Darfur.
I’d suggest a different lesson from the experience of Karadzic. He initiated a program of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. His crimes began shortly after the creation of the Republika Srpska in 1992. The ICTY was established at The Hague in 1993; it handed down its first indictment in November of 1994. By 1995, the UN was on the ground. It was then, in July of 1995, under the nose of UNPROFOR peacekeepers, that Karadzic ordered the slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. What additional deterrent do you think would have been effective in restraining him? How much clearer could the international community possibly have been that it was watching his conduct, and intended to call excesses to account? Rarely, if ever, have war crimes been carried out in a less ambiguous atmosphere. Karadzic knew perfectly well that the world was watching. And he killed eight thousand people anyway, and no conviction can possibly bring back those lives.
So by all means, let’s try and convict him. But let’s not get too smug. We’re closing the barn door a little late. And trying Karadzic won’t deter al-Bashir. Heck, a looming indictment doesn’t appear to be deterring al-Bashir. The lesson of Bosnia is that leaders bent on homicide will continue to defy the international community until they are stopped by the use of force. And catching Karadzic a decade and a half after his crimes does nothing to alter than fundamental truth.
One the one hand, it’s galling that the murderous s.o.b. has been “hiding” in plain site for so long. But on the other, it’s a comforting piece of news.
It took a long, long time before they went after Pinochet. But they did, and he died in the kind of disgrace he deserved. It took twenty years to get even a little justice for a few of the victims of El Salvador’s solidly U.S.-backed death-squad government. But it came.
It might take ten or fifteen or twenty years, or more. But we’re going to bring them to account: Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Rice. Addington. Yoo. Cambone. Gonzales.
Liars, torturers, murderers, political peeping Toms, would-be dictators. Criminals.
aargh. Plain sight.
By 1995, the UN was on the ground. It was then, in July of 1995, under the nose of UNPROFOR peacekeepers, that Karadzic ordered the slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. What additional deterrent do you think would have been effective in restraining him? How much clearer could the international community possibly have been that it was watching his conduct, and intended to call excesses to account? Rarely, if ever, have war crimes been carried out in a less ambiguous atmosphere.
Clearly written by someone who knows virtually nothing about UNPROFOR and its mandate. But apart from the ignorance, I would point out another flaw: Karadzic could, perfectly rationally, have expected that he would never see a court. He might have expected that his superpower friends – Russia and, to a lesser degree, France – would have protected him; he might have expected that ICTY would never in fact be set up, or that he would be granted a de facto or de jure amnesty as a result of any peace settlement.
(Observer also seems to think that “previous generations of Chinese leaders” are still alive. News just in: Chairman Mao Zedong is still dead).
I actually agree with the main drive of observer’s posts, which I would shorten to:
1. The deterrence effect of international courts is low and would be so, even if the court had more real power.
2. Therefore our public emphasis should not be on deterrence when we talk about the court.
3. We “do the court” because it is the right thing to do not for utilitarian reasons.
4. In order to deter and/or prevent genocides etc. we need other than purely judicial means (the same way that it is the police that catches the thief, not the judge*)
Sounds pretty rational to me.
*we are not ancient China, where this was part of the job description
This doesn’t sound like terrible suffering was involved.
Hard to say. I vaguely remember reading about one of the Nazi war criminals who had escaped using a ratline and though he was never caught, the remaining years of his life had him growing increasingly paranoid. Small discomfort compared the suffering he caused, but he wasn’t like Idi Amin wandering around a Saudi supermarket. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking, but I’d like to think that every encounter with a stranger filled him with dread. One can hope.
I think the deterrence effect is being underestimated, but it will take some time and a couple more high profile cases for it to kick in. Most of these genocidal maniacs are incredibly egocentric and vain, i.e. they care a lot
I think the deterrence effect is being underestimated, but it will take some time and a couple more high profile cases for it to kick in. Most of these genocidal maniacs are incredibly egocentric and vain, i.e. they care a lot
I think the deterrence effect is being underestimated, but it will take some time and a couple more high profile cases for it to kick in. Most of these genocidal maniacs are incredibly egocentric and vain, i.e. they care a lot about their own welfare and once you freeze their international bank accounts, declare them a pariah and more countries actually enforce international law, their options for a way out shrink significantly and they might think twice about committing atrocities.
(Sorry about the mess, don’t know what happened)
italics off
italics off
(last try, if that doesn’t work, somebody else give it a shot, please)
Italico delendi!
If all else fails, try magic.
“(Observer also seems to think that ‘previous generations of Chinese leaders’ are still alive. News just in: Chairman Mao Zedong is still dead).”
Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, Li Ruihuan, Qiao Shi, are all still alive, actually, as is Hua Guofeng, and Song Ping, among others.
I think it’s worth pointing out his website, becuase it’s just plain bizarre:
http://www.dragandabic.com/
Answers the question of location too (if you know downtown Belgrade):
“Dr. Dragan Dabic currently resides on Yury Gagarin street in New Belgrade”
Other highlights:
“In mid-1990s Dr. Dabic returned back to mother Serbia for good” [from a tour of India, China etc, apparently]
Each and every of his 10 “personally selected” proverbs is dripping with irony, but I did like this one:
“He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.”
Oh, and the keywords for his site include the sickening-with-hindsight “Spiritual cleansing”
Thank you, Hartmut, for putting that more clearly and succinctly than I was able. And Gary Farber, for making that explicit.
I’d be slightly more comfortable with Observer’s advocacy of the US as upholder of truth and justice and staunch fighter against genocide if our own leaders were held accountable when they commit war crimes or support war criminals. I’d also like to see some Western leaders (along with the obvious American ones) on Observer’s list of bad guys who haven’t been deterred by international law. It reminds me of the Clinton-era debates that were reported in the NYT over whether the US should support the ICC. The anti-ICC people were worried that there would be frivolous prosecutions of alleged American war criminals, and the pro-ICC people (or the ones that were taken seriously) provided reassuring noises about how there were safeguards built in that would prevent such an obvious abuse as a trial of an American war criminal in an international court. Meanwhile Hitchens (still worth reading then) was off to the side shrieking about Kissinger, but serious people didn’t take that seriously.