Balkanalysis.com

The Karadzic Capture and Serbia’s Return to Power

The dramatic arrest of former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, hiding as a bushy-bearded spiritual guru in Novi Beograd, will no doubt inspire a Hollywood film in the not-too-distant future. And it has already inspired a lot of pathos and hyperbole, with one foot similarly in the door of fiction (Madeleine Albright accusing Karadzic of complicity in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Bosnia, when actually just under one hundred thousand on all sides died in the war). And Iran’s government, its broadsides usually shunned or ridiculed in the West, gets self-satisfied airtime, with the IHT not questioning its declared limited ‘political and logistical support’ role in the 1992-95 war.

This was all too predictable, as was CNN and the like scrambling, in the immediate aftermath of the arrest, to get the usual cast of Balkan ‘good guy’ characters in front of the cameras, such as former Bosnian Muslim UN envoy Mo Sacirbey and the chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Haris Silajdzic. Their gushingly effusive castigation, always reserved for those caught on the losing side of history, trumped facts, such as Karadzic’s documented attempts to keep the peace (pointed out by Nebojsa Malic) and the unsettling truth that it was the late Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic who more than any single person was responsible for stoking the conflict in Bosnia- and promoting a radical Islamist ideology in it (as pointed out by former NSA Balkans expert John Schindler in his compelling book Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad).

But these are all details, in some way irrelevant too. After the media cycles predictably play out, nothing will have changed in terms of the collective memory of recent history. What is important, however, is how Serbia will benefit from the handover of Karadzic – and possibly soon Ratko Mladic – in its return to power as the major regional player. And so, while the Bosnian Muslims are expressing their satisfaction at the arrest, they – and Kosovo’s Albanians – are also very uneasy about what the removal of Serbia’s last international shackles means for their own political agendas.

In politics, timing is everything. The argument that Karadzic’s capture was only made possible by the recent change in government in Belgrade is not really believable. If Karadzic is being sacrificed now, it can only be because Serbian leaders believe it will help to extract concessions on other fronts. Maybe these leaders are more clever than their predecessors, and can more clearly see these desired results; nevertheless, all politics works in the same way, with individual aptitude more than policy usually the barometer of success.

The crux of the matter is simply this: that the US, and (especially) European Union, made a mighty wager when, in blocking Serbia’s full restitution in front of the ‘international community’ until war crimes suspects were arrested, they allowed the country full control over how and when to comply. Does the phrase ‘at a time and place of our choosing’ not seem oddly appropriate?

After all, it was not as if they demanded Serbia find a solution to global warming before rejoining the League of Respectable Nations. By comparison, we have poor Macedonia, which valiantly tried, and succeeded, in overhauling its army to meet NATO standards, helping out on every American mission it was asked to, only to be excluded because of Greek bullying. By stipulating all progress as dependent on ‘cooperation with the Hague Tribunal,’ the West set conditions for Serbia that were eminently possible. Serbia’s enemies perhaps assumed that the supposed great spectre of ‘Serb nationalism’ would prove eternally resistant. But the Serbs are nothing if not pragmatic.

With the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, both Bosnians and Albanians have now lost one of the great points of pressure that the ‘international community’ has exerted for years on Belgrade. The diplomatic playing field is about to become much more even. If Mladic is arrested too, things will become very interesting indeed. And this even before the trials, which will inevitably dig up a whole lot of dirt on the former Western diplomats who were directly involved in negotiating with the Bosnian Serb leaders, meaning that the stock of political blackmail can only rise. Part of being on the side of the ‘good guys,’ as the Bosnian Muslims have, is that you don’t get to play that game.

There are signs that the Bosnian Muslims are very nervous indeed. The aforementioned Sacirbey, son of one of Izetbegovic’s closest friends and co-agitators for a pure Islamic state since World War II, penned a sort of op-ed which clearly alludes to why getting Serbia condemned for genocide – which failed last year – is so important to them. He wrote: ‘It is hypocrisy to judge Karadzic guilty for the act of genocide while effectively supporting the perpetuation of the political entity, Republika Srpska, created by Karadzic’s culpable actions. German occupied Sudetenland did not survive the Nazis.’ And Silajdzic also called for the abolition of the RS.

All the florid rhetoric and questionable comparisons here are indicative of two things: one, the tepid results of getting a free ride on the Western propaganda train for too long; and the fact that Bosnia’s future is far from assured. As the Economist wrote, just a few days before the capture:

‘Miroslav Lajcak, the international pro-consul in Bosnia, argues that most of its 3.8m people now put jobs and prosperity above the old national questions. Yet they keep voting for nationalist parties. With local elections due in October, the country may now enter a fresh period of deadlock, as Serb, Croat and Bosniak (Muslim) leaders again champion the interests of their own people, not of the country as a whole. All the arguments that have dogged Bosnia since the Yugoslav collapse in 1991 could come to the fore again.

When the war ended in the 1995 Dayton agreement, Bosnia was divided into two entities, the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation. The first is dominated by Milorad Dodik, who often threatens a referendum on independence. The second is riven by divisions, not only between Bosniaks and Croats, but also among Bosniak leaders. One result is a budget crisis, as the federation has run out of money.’

Numerous reports in recent years have illustrated the differences between the RS and Federation. The ‘multi-ethnic’ latter largely consists of Muslims only, the few Croats reportedly only keeping up their homes in Bosnia for various benefits but in actuality living across the border in Croatia. Banja Luka’s stock exchange and general investment climate have been reported as easier to navigate than Sarajevo’s for foreign investors. And then there is that nagging issue of deporting former foreign mujahedin from the Federation, an issue that has had political reverberations internally and abroad. And while the Federation is ‘riven by divisions,’ as the Economist puts it, Dodik enjoys great popularity among Bosnian Serbs. Were Bosnia to splinter, which half would have a better chance of survival? And what would the conditions for sustainability (i.e., the support of which specific foreign countries) entail for their future political orientation?

Similarly, there has been some degree of desperation over Serbia in recent years but it is not at all of the same order. Contrary to the usual breathless media reports, there is no epic struggle for saving democracy or preserving human rights and war accountability, or emergency for ‘saving’ the Serbian people. In actuality, it is the West that has acted in a constant state of panic, risibly evident with every election or important political decision in Serbia. The fear of ‘losing’ Serbia – the once and future economic motor of the Balkans – to Russia is what has them chronically concerned. PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently rated Serbia as the third-most attractive investment destination among developing economies. And so the West fears losing Serbia as a market, whereas it fears losing Bosnia and Kosovo as civilizations. Appeasing the aspirations of two dysfunctional Balkan Muslim statelets is mostly a concern in view of their capacity to be potential headaches- in terms of suppressing any tendencies towards destabilization or large-scale criminality or extremism there.

Things are not necessarily so simple, of course. There are many counter-interests and lobbies also pushing rival agendas. There is the question of untapped natural resources, civil infrastructure and the possible gradual merger of Kosovo with Albania, in which case Bosnia would not likely survive. But what Serbia has become today, on its road to resurgence, looks a bit like something we have seen before. A central Balkan country cannily balancing political and economic interests between the West and Russia, while cultivating ties with the Muslim and developing world, exerting maximum benefits from all? Except for Tito and his dogma and way of rule, Serbia today looks diplomatically an awful lot like the old Communist Yugoslavia, and even the Royalist one it shored up long before that. And it will be a long time, if ever, before its antagonistic smaller neighbors step out of its shadow.