As we round a bend in the road, after crossing the border from Bosnia into
Montenegro on almost impassable logging tracks, the silence of the remote
Durmitor mountains is broken by the sound of a mechanical digger. In the
distance a group of men work with pickaxes and shovels alongside a small
bulldozer. When our car draws close, they seem startled, down tools and move
as one in our direction. Behind them, it appears they have hewn out of the
rock face the beginnings of a stage and tiered seating.
When we walk towards the men, they quickly surround my interpreter and me, and
demand to know who we are and why we have come. Few strangers venture into
these parts and those who do are rarely welcome.
Many of the men share a common surname: Karadzic. All are relatives of
Europe's most wanted war criminal: Radovan Karadzic, the bouffant-haired
former Bosnian Serb president charged with genocide by the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague.
Extraordinarily, what these men are building is a venue for a literary
festival to be held in his honour.
For the past 10 years, Radovan Karadzic and his chief military henchman, Ratko
Mladic, have been at the top of the Hague's wanted list as chief architects
of the savage 1992-5 war in which over 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian
Muslims, were raped, tortured and killed. As the smaller fry responsible for
such ethnic cleansing have gradually come to trial, the two men held most
responsible for the worst war crimes committed in Europe since the end of
the second world war remain at large. I have set out to discover why.
This is Petnjica, the small village where Karadzic was born. There are more
than a dozen families here bearing the Karadzic name. What greets us is
perhaps the ultimate symbol of the folly and denial of those who continue to
support both Karadzic and Mladic. It is a folly matched by the incompetence
of international peacekeepers, others within the international community,
and government authorities in the region, who defiantly declare they want
both men brought to justice, yet have allowed the decade-long manhunt to
descend into farce.
The longer this farce continues, the more it is interpreted by those with an
interest in rewriting history as evidence of the lack of a case to answer.
For the Karadzic clan, however, history has always been seen through a
warped prism. 'Radovan is a good man. He did what all of us would have done
to defend our fellow Serbs,' says Tomislav Karadzic, older cousin of the
former head of state. The stooped 63-year-old shakes his head as he leads us
across fields for coffee at his farmhouse. 'It's very hurtful what they
say,' he complains, refusing to hear of the charges laid against the man he
recalls playing with as a child. In the words of one of the ICTY judges,
these charges relate to 'scenes of unimaginable savagery... truly scenes
from hell, written on the darkest pages of history'.
One of two counts of genocide faced by both Karadzic and Mladic stems from the
July 1995 slaughter of an estimated 7,500 men and boys in Srebrenica in
which, the indictment states, 'Men were buried alive, women mutilated,
children killed before their mother's eyes... a grandfather forced to eat
his own grandson's liver.' Yet Tomislav insists: 'I'm proud to call myself a
Karadzic. This is a noble family: we have produced dukes and warriors,
writers, heroes.' On the wall hangs a family tree dating back to 1642, with
hundreds of names. He points out one central character to whom his cousin is
directly related: Vuk Karadzic, a well-known 19th-century Serbian writer,
who drew up a system of phonetics fundamental to the Serbo-Croatian
language. 'Radovan inherited his literary talent. That is why we are
building a venue here for a biennial international Karadzic literary
festival.' The first phase is due to be finished this month, he says, after
which there will be an inauguration. 'We expect schoolchildren and
international visitors, once the festival is launched. And if God is just,
Radovan will, one day, be able to attend,' says Tomislav of the man on whose
head the US government has placed a $5m bounty. When asked when that might
be, Tomislav stares broodily into the distance.
'The mountains and caves around here have protected Karadzics for more than
500 years,' says Simeun Karadzic. 'They will never give up their secrets -
least of all to you. You probably have family in the armed forces who
dropped bombs on our children in Belgrade. Let me show you something that
hangs in the house of every good Serb family, and you will understand why
nobody is a traitor.' Karadzic and Mladic beam out from photographs above
the September-October page of a 2005 calendar. The curse that runs alongside
reads: 'Whoever betrays these heroes, let his heart explode. Whoever says
where they are, let him eat his own bones. Let him answer to God for his
deeds. For in his family there will be neither marriages nor celebrations.
And no more males to carry guns.'
'Why is it only Serbs are blamed for what went on? There was killing on all
sides,' says Simeun, ignoring the fact that Croat and Bosnian Muslim
soldiers face war-crimes charges in the Hague too. He then takes us on a
tour of the building site, pointing out areas that will be planted 'with
national flowers, not Dutch tulips or English grass'. Neither Simeun nor
Tomislav will disclose where the money is coming from for this scheme in
such a poor village, except to say there are 'benefactors who make
donations'.
Amid all the boasting, the two cousins provide a crucial insight into the man
who ordered the citizens of Sarajevo to be starved of food and sniped at for
three years.
He comes from a family accustomed to violence. 'All Karadzics are like wild
animals. But Radovan's father was not only harsh, he was dangerous,' says
Simeun, though he stops short of mentioning that Radovan Karadzic's father
was ostracised by his family after being accused of raping and killing a
cousin, and that his grandfather murdered a neighbour in an argument over
stolen oxen. To escape this violent childhood, no doubt, Radovan Karadzic, a
bright student, left Montenegro for Sarajevo, to train first as a doctor and
then as a psychiatrist, and write poetry. He portrayed himself as a
sensitive bohemian; work colleagues remember him anxiously biting his
fingernails until they bled, and locking himself in his office when
confronted by agitated patients. It was after he had been jailed briefly for
embezzlement in the mid-1980s that he modelled a career for himself as a
dangerous demagogue.
As the communist state of Yugoslavia crumbled in the early 1990s, Karadzic
helped set up the Serbian Democratic party (SDP) when Bosnia was struggling
for independence. The SDP supported the goal of a 'Greater Serbia', uniting
all Serbs in the disintegrating state, as did his mentor Slobodan Milosevic,
then president of Serbia. As both whipped up Serb nationalism, turning it
into a murderous frenzy, Karadzic declared himself head of the independent
Serbian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and set about 'cleansing' it of
Croats and Bosnian Muslim.
More than a decade later, Milosevic is sitting in a courtroom at the Hague,
charged with war crimes in Kosovo and Croatia, and genocide in Bosnia. Both
Serbia and Republika Srpska - the vast swathe of territory to the north and
east of Bosnia ceded to the Serbs by the Dayton peace accords - are regarded
internationally as pariah states, and their people have been left struggling
for economic survival. As a result, support for Karadzic is on the wane. In
most of Republika Srpska, it is only those in the still-functioning SDP,
which many view as Karadzic's private protection racket, who openly back
him.
Except, that is, in this mountainous corner of northwestern Montenegro where
he was born, and in remote communities in southeastern Bosnia, where he is
still revered and so is believed to move about with ease.
While Karadzic has been losing the support of his fellow Serbs, many have
excused Mladic on the grounds he was a professional soldier doing his
master's bidding. But, as with the Karadzic clan, there is widespread denial
of the truth of what happened during Bosnia's brutal conflict.
Milica Avram, Mladic's 65-year-old sister, improbably insists she has neither
seen nor heard from her brother in years. 'If he was a bad man, it would not
be so hard to bear. But he is a great man. He did nothing he is accused of.
He was the one handing out sweets and chocolates to children in Srebrenica.
He never wanted to be a soldier, he wanted to be a doctor. But where we grew
up, he had no chance of an education unless he entered the military,' says
Avram, who lives in Vojkovici, on the road from Sarajevo to Foca, the town
where Karadzic and Mladic's men operated one of the most notorious rape
camps during the war. When we travel further along the road to Foca, and
take a detour into the Treskavica mountains, it is easier to see what she
means.
'There used to be a saying in the army: 'If you step out of line, you'll be
sent to Kalinovik,'' our driver says, manoeuvring onto yet another dirt
track beyond the small town of that name. The hamlet of Bozinovic, where
Mladic was born, is further on, across a rocky moonscape dotted with the
rusting hulks of cars on which black crows perch. Mladic's relatives turn
their backs and curse us when we ask when they last saw the general. Jovo
Mandic, an elderly neighbour, shakes his fist and shouts:
'We would all kiss him and hide him if he came here. I would give my life, my
own child, to save him. He is a national hero!' Such sentiments are echoed
by many we speak to across Republika Srpska. 'It is not possible he is a war
criminal. He was a good communist,' says his former driver, a grocer in the
northern town of Han Pijesak. 'Though maybe, following the death of his
daughter, he lost his grip a little,' he adds. Others claim that Mladic's
blood lust increased after the suicide of his only daughter, Ana, who killed
herself in 1994 after reading accusations about her father's brutal war
record. The 23-year-old medical student shot herself in the head with a gun
that her father had sworn should only be fired to celebrate the birth of his
grandchildren.
Yet since the release, last July, of video footage of the murder of a group of
Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica - 10 years after the slaughter - Serbs
are beginning to change their minds about Mladic. The footage shows six
terrified prisoners, some in their teens, being hauled from a truck by Serb
paramilitaries and subjected to a mock execution before being led into the
woods and shot. Until 2002, however, eight years after being charged
alongside Karadzic with genocide and other crimes against humanity, Mladic
was still receiving a full military salary from the Serbian government, and
until two years ago he was on the payroll of the defence ministry of
Republika Srpska. Even now he receives a pension of about e400 a month from
the government of Serbia and Montenegro - money collected by his son.
With the support networks for Mladic and Karadzic so clearly defined, and the
circles, even some geographical areas, within which they have been moving
known, it's no wonder there is such anger about the ongoing failure to
capture them. The EU has insisted that talks for Bosnia-Herzegovina to join
the union don't start until both men are behind bars at the Hague. This has
left the country with seriously stunted political development, low growth,
high unemployment and pervasive corruption.
The woman whose regular proclamations about imminent arrest particularly anger
Bosnians is the ICTY's fist-thumping Swiss-born chief prosecutor, Carla Del
Ponte. Yet, apart from a small number of investigators on the ground in
Bosnia, the tribunal Del Ponte joined in 1999 lacks a police force of its
own, making it reliant on international peacekeepers and the authorities of
the former Yugoslav republics to hunt the men down and deliver them to the
Hague. For years these various organisations - including Nato, Eufor (the
7,000-strong EU force), the US and EU police missions and intelligence
services, the Bosnian and Republika Srpska police and intelligence agencies,
together with those of Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia's state border
service - have been pointing the finger of blame for failure at each other.()
In the immediate aftermath of the war in Bosnia, Nato commanders excused their
lack of success in arresting war-crimes suspects by citing fears that such
arrests would destabilise the region. This led to farcical situations in
which Karadzic, Mladic and others were waved through Nato checkpoints
without being stopped. Later, this excuse shifted to a desire to minimise
reprisals against Nato soldiers attempting to apprehend the wanted men -
so-called 'force protection'. Most Bosnians are convinced the real reasons
for the lack of arrests are behind-the-scenes deals struck by Nato with
Mladic and, in particular, Karadzic, to bring the conflict to an end.
Karadzic has boasted he was assured by the US envoy at the time, Richard
Holbrooke, that as long as he retired from political life, he would be left
in peace. Following on the trail of bungled attempts to seize both men, it
is impossible not to believe that there is some truth in this.
High in the mountain village of Celebici in southeastern Bosnia, somebody
switches off the light in a wooden house and refuses to answer the door when
we approach as dusk falls. 'We know nothing, we think nothing,' says an old
woman, sullenly serving beer to a forestry worker and a hyperactive teenager
in a small shack that serves as a bar. 'Why would anyone come to a place
like this where even we can hardly survive?' she says when asked if she knew
if Karadzic had ever been in the area.
'Yes, I saw him: he was here. He runs a drugs ring here,' the teenager
contradicts her. What he says is not completely far-fetched. Lucrative deals
in black-market cigarettes, whisky and petrol, together with
drug-trafficking and illegal logging, are believed by those on the trail of
Karadzic and Mladic to provide the financial underpinnings of their support
networks.
Certainly, Nato believed he was here three years ago when, early one February
morning, four US helicopters swooped low, and military transport vehicles
pulled into Celebici. Both disgorged more than 100 masked Nato soldiers, who
moved from house to house here and in neighbouring hamlets, banging on doors
and arresting and interrogating villagers for two days. They repeated the
operation six months later.
Looking out across the vast stretches of wooded mountains that surround
Celebici, it is clear that if Karadzic had been anywhere in the vicinity as
the Nato troops approached, he would have had ample warning and time to
escape into Montenegro. The border lies less than a kilometre away, and it
has taken us over two hours to pull our car along the deeply potholed mud
track that leads here from Foca.
Another attempt by Nato forces to arrest Karadzic was staged in an equally
high-profile but equally unsuccessful operation in Pale, near Sarajevo, last
year. Acting on information that Karadzic was ill and seeking medical help,
Nato troops stormed a priest's house, but no trace of Karadzic was found.
Since then, there have been repeated raids on the homes of his wife,
Ljiljana, and daughter, Sonja, in Pale, and in July his son was arrested for
questioning. Until last year these houses were guarded by French troops
attached to the Nato force. As well as the deal Holbrooke allegedly struck
with Karadzic, there have long been suspicions that the French continued to
protect him because of their traditional ties with the Serbs. Some claim
that French soldiers would make no mention, until a day or so after
Karadzic's wife had left her house, that she was going on trips - trips she
is now understood to have been taking to see her husband.
Letters seized by Nato forces during one of the raids on her home show that
Karadzic has continued to correspond with his wife and to receive
clandestine visits from her while on the run. In letters written between
January 1999 and December 2002, passed to his wife by couriers, he talks of
arranging meetings: 'Now summer is practically here, everybody is going
somewhere, so it would not be a problem [to meet].' Later, presumably after
they have met, he jokes about his wife feeling unwell: 'If I was younger, I
would hope you were pregnant.'
While in hiding, he has also continued to develop his amateur literary career.
In the past two years, an autobiographical novel, Miraculous Chronicles of
the Night, has become available in the Serbian capital and Republika Srpska.
He is also said by Sonja to have been working on a play called Situation -
'a black comedy about a man chosen to become the leader of his people', she
says. A play he hopes, perhaps, to see performed one day at the Karadzic
literary festival.
Some claim that Karadzic now spends much of his time disguised as an Orthodox
priest, moving regularly between church properties on both sides of the
Bosnia-Montenegro border. Monitored phone calls are said to have tracked him
to a temporary hiding place in Montenegro's Ostrog monastery. 'Church is no
place for politics. We are not hiding him here. Only God can protect him
now,' says Father Sergei, a senior priest at Ostrog. Other seized letters
written by Karadzic, however, suggest he has been trying to involve the
church in dubious property deals.
Mladic, meanwhile, is believed still to rely on the protection of his former
military comrades.
Until three years ago, he was seen dining openly in expensive restaurants in
Belgrade, and was spotted attending football matches. After Milosevic was
sent to the Hague, and Mladic lost his political protector, he went into
hiding and has rarely been sighted since. On the eve of local elections in
Serbia in the summer of 2004, however, Nato sources say he sought refuge in
a bunker complex at Han Pijesak, which once served as the general's wartime
headquarters.
Six months later, Nato troops swooped on the site and found the underground
complex fully heated, with beds made and a kitchen fully stocked. In an
operation code-named 'stable door', they ordered the bunker to be sealed off
with concrete. When we visited in September, however, Serb soldiers standing
guard at its entrance, and ordering us to leave immediately, gave no
indication that the site had been closed.
In recent months there has been much speculation that Mladic would rather
commit suicide than risk capture. Others claim that negotiations are under
way with the government in Belgrade to persuade him to surrender to the
Hague. A large amount of money is said to have been offered to his family if
he hands himself in. To the outrage of most Bosnians, money is known to have
been paid to the families of other, lower-ranking war-crimes suspects,
partially explaining the large number of surrenders of wanted men - 69 in
all, 24 in the past year. This brings to 126 those indicted for war crimes
by the ICTY who have so far been sent to the Hague for trial - 25 of them
arrested outside the Balkans, some in Russia and South America. As the
number of war-crimes suspects wanted by the ICTY has dwindled - just seven,
including Karadzic and Mladic, remain at large - the military brass with
both Nato and Eufor bridle at accusations that their list of bungled
operations amounts to serial failure.
'Yes, it's true the most wanted are still at large,' concedes General Bill
Weber, the newly arrived Texan head of Nato's small remaining force.
'But what's interesting is that as the number of ÔPifwcs' reduce, you can
focus more of your attention and resources on the small number that remain.'
Pifwcs is an acronym for 'persons indicted for war crimes', but as a
civilian at the base later pointed out, 'It makes them sound more like cute
cookies than criminals.' Weber goes on to admit how the Americans really
view it: 'We just want to get this issue off the table now and move on. It's
been 10 years. It's gone on long enough. How much longer can it go on?'
It is a question every Bosnian would like answered. But Weber's comment sums
up the increasing lack of interest most feel that the international
community now shows towards the issue of arresting Karadzic and Mladic. The
policy of Britain and the rest of the EU and the US has been a combination
of carrot and stick; the carrot being the beginning of accession talks to
the EU and membership of Nato's Partnership for Peace programme, and the
stick, a suspension of aid. But neither has worked so far when it comes to
Karadzic and Mladic.
'Bosnia has become a sideshow, an irritant, a nuisance, now that the focus is
on Iraq and the war on terrorism,' said one frustrated political consultant.
Given the amount of intelligence there has been about the whereabouts of
both men, he reflects the view of many that neither will be caught until it
is considered politically expedient - especially by the authorities in
Serbia, Montenegro and Republika Srpska.
Paddy Ashdown, the international community's high representative in Bosnia,
looks weary as he speaks of the need for the hunt for Karadzic and Mladic to
be viewed as a 'long campaign, not a series of commando raids. Until now the
policy of the international community has been the policy of the lucky
break. What you have to do to catch him is change the perception of the
people who provide him with support'.
To this end, Ashdown has concentrated his efforts on launching Operation
Balkan Vice to crack down on the organised-crime networks that support
Karadzic and Mladic. He has frozen the assets of many of those involved and
sacked dozens of officials, including Bosnian Serb politicians and police
accused of impeding the hunt. 'You can't have stable peace without justice,
and you can't have justice until the primary architects of this horror are
brought to trial,' says Ashdown, whose term of office is due to end early
next year. Whoever takes his place as high representative is mandated by the
Dayton peace accords to continue pushing for the arrest of Karadzic, Mladic
and other wanted war criminals. 'Karadzic has famously vowed he will Ôhold
on until the foreigners get bored, go away and leave us to our own devices'.
But we will not go away until they are captured,' says Ashdown. Weber's
assurance is more alarming: 'I'd like to remind people that Simon Wiesenthal
was still chasing war criminals 50 years after the end of the second world
war.' Bosnia may not have the luxury of so much time.
Aside from talks on the country's accession to the EU and future economic
welfare being conditional on their capture, some raise the spectre of
renewed conflict if they are not caught. There has never been any doubt that
the way Bosnia was carved up into a semi-autonomous Serb republic and
Muslim-Croat federation - which share rotating positions of government
authority - was unworkable in the long term. The longer Karadzic and Mladic
remain at large, the greater the risk of those, especially within Republika
Srpska and neighbouring Serbia, using such a denial of atrocities committed
during the war to fuel dangerous tensions in Bosnia's fledgling democracy.
Suzana Sacic, a columnist with the Sarajevo weekly news magazine Slobodna
Bosna, sums up the threat: 'Evil politics are behind the fact that Karadzic
and Mladic have been allowed to remain free. This has left this entire
region in a dangerous vacuum. What would have happened if Hitler had
remained on the scene, and been allowed to continue influencing Germany's
political life?'
Long day's journey into darkness
Radovan Karadzic
1945 Born Petnjica, Montenegro
1960 Moves to Sarajevo
1968 Starts to publish poetry
1971 Graduates as physician and psychiatrist
1985 Imprisoned on embezzlement and fraud charges
1990 Helps found Serbian Democratic party
1992 Declares himself president of the independent Serbian
Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. During the ensuing war (1992-5), an
estimated 200,000 are killed
1995 Indicted by the ICTY in the Hague for war crimes and
crimes against humanity
1996 Forced to step down as president of the Serbian
Democratic party after sanctions threatened against Republika Srpska
1996 International arrest warrants issued for Karadzic and
Mladic on July 11, and Karadzic goes into hiding
Ratko Mladic
1943 Born Bozinovic, near Kalinovik, Bosnia- Herzegovina
1965 Graduates from military academy and rises rapidly
through the ranks of the Yugoslav people's army (JNA)
1991 Appointed commander of the JNA in Knin, Croatia, which
had just declared independence. An estimated 20,000 die in
a seven-month war, during which hospitals are pounded with artillery
1992 Appointed commander of the Bosnian Serb army
1994 His daughter Ana commits suicide
1995 Aided by the JNA, leads Bosnian Serb forces to take the
UN 'safe havens' of Srebrenica and Zepa. Televised patting children on the
head; 40,000 Bosnian Muslims are then expelled from Srebrenica and an
estimated 7,500 men and boys are executed. Mass graves are still being
unearthed
1995 Indicted by the ICTY on the same charges as Radovan
Karadzic. International warrant for his arrest issued the following year
2000 Seen attending football matches in Belgrade (including a
friendly between Yugoslavia and China in March) and dining openly on steak
and caviar in Belgrade restaurants, up until 2002 - several months after his
political mentor Slobodan Milosevic is extradited to the Hague in 2001
