Lacking their own police forces, international tribunals depend on international cooperation to ensure that war-crime suspects are brought to justice. The recent wave of surrenders to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) shows that international pressure can induce cooperation in even the most recalcitrant states, provided that their diplomatic and economic interests are affected.
Twelve indicted suspects have surrendered to the Hague-based tribunal since January. On March 24, Croatia turned over former Macedonian interior minister Ljube Boskovski, the final person to be indicted by ICTY. Equally notable are the voluntary surrenders of Kosovo’s former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj on March 9 and Bosnian army commander Rasim Delic on February 28.
The real breakthrough in cooperation, however, has taken place in Serbia. For almost a decade, authorities in Belgrade have obstructed the work of the tribunal, and denounced it as biased against Serbs. But since December last year, Serbia has sent an indictee to the Hague practically every week. While most of the surrenders are described as “voluntary,” there is little doubt that the government has been instrumental.
Belgrade’s attitude has undergone a sea-change. Throughout 2004, the government insisted that surrendering high-ranking police and army generals to the tribunal would destabilize the country, and the generals should be tried at home. Serbia’s recalcitrance was bolstered by suggestions from Washington that the generals’ trials could take place in Belgrade, provided that Serbia handed over former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, indicted for the July 1995 genocide in Srebrenica.
By the end of the year the Bush administration had changed its tune, after loud protests from ICTY officials and human rights groups. Washington stressed the need for full cooperation with the tribunal, and insisted that the generals would have to go to the Hague. In January 2005, the U.S. government suspended economic assistance to Serbia over its failure to cooperate with the tribunal. The change of policy has been critical to Serbia’s about-face.
Pressure from the European Union (E.U.) has also been crucial to Serbia’s change of heart. Since January, the Serbian public has heard repeated references to a forthcoming E.U. “feasibility study” to assess the country’s progress toward eventual E.U. membership. But E.U. officials have made it clear that the study will not go ahead unless Belgrade steps up its cooperation with ICTY by the end of March.
Other factors have also played a part. In particular, a series of recent indictments and trials involving ethnic Croats, ethnic Albanians, and Bosnian Muslims defendants has weakened the perception in Serbia – carefully nourished by its politicians and media – that the ICTY is an anti-Serb court. The moves have made it easier for Serbian President Kostunica to send indicted Serbs to the Hague without appearing a traitor.
The E.U.’s principled stance on Croatia has been doubly important. On March 16, the European Council decided to postpone talks about Croatia’s accession over its failure to cooperate fully with the ICTY, a long-established precondition to the start of membership talks. Croatia’s unwillingness to deliver the fugitive general Ante Gotovina to the ICTY was the decisive factor in the E.U.’s decision. Aside from Gotovina, Croatia has sent all ICTY indictees to the Hague. It had been evident for at least a month before March 16 that the E.U. decision on Croatia would be negative, unless Gotovina appeared in the Hague before the deadline. Over the border, in Serbia, the E.U.’s principled stance took away even more ammunition from those who allege that Serbia is the victim of “double standards.”
The news is not all positive. For the governments in the western Balkans, cooperation with the ICTY is still about sticks and carrots, rather than any principled commitment to justice. With some possible exceptions – the authorities in the non-Serb half of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatian president Stipe Mesic come to mind – most post-war politicians in the region cooperate only under pressure, or when they assess that it brings specific gains. And some prominent suspects remain at large, notably Ratko Mladic, and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, the twin architects of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, as well as Gotovina.
Yet despite being driven more by pragmatism rather than principle, and unfinished—with some big fish still at liberty, stepped up cooperation with the tribunal is a truly positive development. It makes it possible for the Hague tribunal to perform its fundamental task—achieving justice for the victims of the worst atrocities in Europe since 1945.
