Subject: THE BOSNIA WAR CRIMES COULD WELL GO UNPUNISHED
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By Sadruddin Aga Khan - Herald Tribune Inter.- Feb.9, 1994
GENEVA - The slaughter of 68 people at a crowded market in Sarajevo on
Saturday brutally demonstrates how ineffectual Western leaders and the
United Nations have been in stopping the genocide in Bosnia.
Less noticed is the discreet gutting of the one opportunity for justice -
however inadequate - that the international community had promised to the
citizens of that abused country.
The teeth are being pulled from the International War Crimes Tribunal, set
up by the UN Security Council with fanfare last year. The UN WarCrimes
Commission, which is charged with assembling evidence, will soon be
disbanded.
This is being done by the very statesmen who hailed the tribunal - at least
publicly - as the means of ensuring that however unfavorable a peace
settlement would be to the Bosnians, they could at least see justice done
to the perpetrators of mass rape, murder and torture.
For people who have lost family. homes, communities and country, the
prospect of protracted international legal proceedings against the Serbian
and Croatian leaders Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, Radovan Karadzic
and their lieutenants might seem cold comfort at best.
Yet, as the Nuremberg trials demonstrated, holding a vicious regime to
account is an important act of renewal for both sides.Now that opportunity
may be lost.
The UN secretary-general, Butros Butros Ghali,has indicated that he expects
the War Crimes Commission to wrap up its work by April.
This abrupt closing of the investigation before the tribunal is properly up
and running is already having consequences on the ground. It has raised
doubts about the tribunal's legal authority for completing the exhumation
of a mass grave of Croatian victims of suspected Serbian war crimes in
Vukovar. Future investigations, and therefore prosecutions, are also likely
to be undercut. To make things worse, the Venezuelan appointed to be chief
prosecutor has now renounced the job to pursue apolitical career. This
means further delay.
International leaders are engaged in a monumental whitewash of Serbian and
Croatian leaders for reasons of political expediency, to keep them at the
negotiating table.
Reluctant to use air strikes or other military intervention, Western
politicians offer these leaders a new respectability and the promise of
eventual financial support, grateful for any indication that they will stop
the atrocious war.
Many of the international negotiators who initially went along with the
idea of a war crimes tribunal probably never thought of it as a practical
possibility, but as a convenient way to silence human rights activists and
other supporters of the Bosnians. Perhaps they thought the tribunal could
be used later as a bargaining chip to win Serbian and Croatian agreement to
a peace settlement.
For cntics of the West's cowardly stance during this savage war, however,
the tribunal mattered: It offered some prospect of accountability.
Although it was never likely that the paper trail would exist to implicate
top officials, the successful prosecution of field commanders and local
extremists who encouraged mass rape and murder might have begun a healing
process after the war.
Now, though, the neutering of the international tribunai is under way. Only
a facade will remain, it seems - one that can be counted on not to produce
embarrassing prosecutions. A neat Machiavellian bargain.
Consider the separate agreement signed last year by the Bosnian Muslim
leader Fikret Abdic with Serbia. It is an indication of what an eventual
peace treaty between the warring parties could encompass. The agreement
states that each side will prosecute its own. and that each regards the
conflict as an internal matter.
The implications for potential war crimes trials are significant. Under
international law, only international wars can produce such
