Serbia’s troubles: A Balkan mess

Date: 28/02/04

Serbs' dislike of The Hague war-crimes tribunal spills into politics

FOR liberal Serbs, as for anybody who wants Serbia reconciled with the West, co-operation between Belgrade and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague was supposed to be the first step in a benign process. The theory went like this. Some of the region's worst characters would be discredited in the eyes of the world, including among their own kin. Their malign influence on domestic politics would end. And the stain of Serbia's “collective guilt” would be wiped away.

In practice, it has all turned out rather differently. More than three years after the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia is staggering through a political crisis, in which two of the protagonists are parties headed, until recently, by men who are now war-crimes suspects. The bidders for power in Belgrade include the Socialists, formerly led by Mr Milosevic, and the Serbian Radical Party, which did well in December's general election: its founder, Vojislav Seselj, is so extreme that before surrendering to The Hague he called the Socialists too soft. Both parties loathe any idea of more extraditions to The Hague. Vojislav Kostunica, the ex-president of Yugoslavia who is chief coalition-broker and prospective prime minister, says extraditions are not a priority for him either.

What has gone wrong? Many Serbs thought their country's dealings with The Hague were part of a bargaining process, in which they would make concessions in return for rewards elsewhere. As they see it, the concessions have all been one way. “The tribunal has lost the propaganda war,” says Dragana Nikolic, a Belgrade-based analyst at the IWPR news service. “Serbs believe that The Hague has blackmailed them, and they now hate it more than they hate NATO.”

Any bar-room pundit in Belgrade can reel off the court's failings. No ethnic Albanian has been indicted over the killings or disappearances of hundreds of Serb civilians in Kosovo during and since the war. (So far four Kosovars have been hauled to The Hague; the court says it is investigating others.) Another grouse arises from the revelation that Alija Izetbegovic, the late Bosnian president, was under investigation by the court. Why, ask Serbs, was the Muslim leader treated so leniently during his lifetime? A third grumble is that the court has refused to consider whether NATO might have been at fault in avoidably killing civilians in its 1999 air war against Serbia. (NATO says it tried to kill as few civilians as possible; human-rights observers reckon about 500 died.)

What few Serbs accept is that the removal to The Hague of some of the darker figures in their own political arena might have been of direct benefit to their country. And that this remains true regardless of any “rewards” such handovers might attract.

Serbs' dislike of the ICTY spills into politics.