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Warrant Aims at Pair Who Ran Bosnian Serbs’ War Machine
The Indictment Against Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic
Karadzic was the ideological force behind his army as it smashed its way across 70 percent of the country, killing thousands with long-distance artillery. Mladic, who often differed with the political leadership in Pale, was the professional military leader who used tanks devastatingly in mountain terrain.
Together, they were held responsible for the 3½ year siege of Sarajevo, in which some 12,000 civilians died, and the bloody Serb assault on Srebrenica in July 1995. And although the U.N. criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia on Thursday issued international arrest warrants for the two, it remains unclear when they will be taken into custody.
International condemnation never swayed Karadzic in his conviction that however much his methods outraged the West,
realpolitik would dictate a settlement in favour of the Serbs. It was a message he preached to sustain his people under blockade from former allies in Serbia proper and the threat of air attack by NATO, the form of outside intervention most feared by Serbs.
Karadzic, with his trademark mass of waved grey hair, was a hospital psychiatrist in pre-war Sarajevo. A dabbler in the cultural life of the cosmopolitan Bosnian capital, he was known as a poet -- with three published books of verse -- and a medical officer to the local football team. Like many others who have become prominent on both sides in the war, he was not a native Bosnian. The Karadzic family came from Montenegro.
He entered politics as nationalist fault lines began to presage the disintegration of old Yugoslavia and quickly shook off any figurehead status among Bosnian Serbs to assert himself as a durable war leader. Command of English made him a natural spokesman for the Bosnian Serbs in the early days when they were courted at peace talks in New York, London and Geneva. He proved to be a wily negotiator, well able to survive the pitfalls of international diplomacy.
The tide turned against Karadzic in 1993 after he rejected an international peace plan and Bosnian Muslims and Croats started gnawing at his territory. He finally lost western Bosnia in 1995 and his popularity among ordinary Serbs, subjected to a Serbian anti-Karadzic media campaign portraying him as a war profiteer, plummeted.
Mladic, 52, is a flamboyant, audacious and politically adept product of the communist-dominated officer corps of the former Yugoslav Federal Army. The son of a partisan fighter killed during World War Two, his life has been a microcosm of the emotions and tribal history which generated the Bosnian conflict. A genuine fighting soldier, the burly, bull-necked Mladic commands in the front line mud alongside his men and they return his commitment accordingly. He won over his foes through a mixture of bluff, breathtaking disregard for human life and force of personality.
Mladic is hated by Muslims, who call him the "Butcher of Bosnia," and adored by Serbs. In contrast to Karadzic, his extradition to The Hague would be certain to provoke a fierce outcry among the Serbs and his loyal followers in the Yugoslav army. His leftist ideological commitment has pitted him against the ultra-rightist Karadzic with whom he fell out in early 1995 after accusing him of treason and war profiteering. But he refused to grasp a chance to oust Karadzic that year, saying it would have been an act of treachery.
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BELGRADE, July 11 (Reuters) - Thoughout 43 months of fighting, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were at the heart of
the Bosnian Serb war machine which sought to impose Serb rule throughout Bosnia.
Berserkistan, July 11 · Tribiunal Issues Arrest Warrants for Karadzic, Mladic
Berserkistan, July 10 · Tribiunal Prosecutes Karadzic, Mladic in Mock Trial
Berserkistan, July 7 · Karadzic, Mladic Know they are Hunted Men
Berserkistan, July 5 · Karadzic’s Lawyers Say He Wants a Fair Trial
Berserkistan, July 2 · Karadzic Practices Psychiatry in Politics
Berserkistan, May 4 · Karadzic's Wife says West Misunderstands Radovan
Berserkistan Manhunt! How Much Can NATO Do to Capture Mladic, Karadzic?
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