Accept, acknowledge, move on

Yesterday’s Serbian government statement responding to the guilty verdicts against former Republika Srpska leader Radovan Karadzic walks a tightrope. It implicitly acknowledges the legitimacy of the court’s decisions in this particular case but refuses any implication of collective responsibility and complains about the failure to hold people responsible for crimes against Serbs:

…every crime must be punished, as well as any individual who took part in them, but that any kind of politicisation and placing collective guilt on individual nations for the crimes committed by people with names and surnames is impermissible.

…the Serbian government does not want to react to the content and explanation of any single verdict of the Hague Tribunal, but that, after many years of work of that court, a bitter taste remains due to the fact that the masterminds of the policy of crimes against Serbs have not been punished in any way.

I know lots of people who might have liked the statement to have been more explicit and to have accepted Serbian government responsibility. In particular the Srebrenica genocide was carried out under the command of a Yugoslav National Army (JNA) officer, Ratko Mladic, who was at least equally responsible alongside Slobodan Milosevic as well as Karadzic. But I am tiring of waiting for Belgrade to acknowledge official responsibility and confident history will record the truth of the matter. I even hope it will some day be taught in Serbian schools.

Americans should be understanding: it is only recently that we are acknowledging official responsibility for atrocities against our continent’s indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans.

The Serbian government is correct in rejecting collective guilt. While those who voted repeatedly for Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic bear some indirect responsibility for what they did with the power entrusted to them, I know lots of Serbs who had the courage and dignity to object. I’m reminded of Zoran Djindjic’s first appearance in Washington after the fall of Milosevic. When an audience member prefaced a question by stating that Serbs were not collectively responsible, he responded that it would nevertheless be necessary for history to consider how Milosevic came to power and the extent of the support he enjoyed.

The complaint about the failure to hold others responsible for crimes against Serbs is unfortunately accurate. It would be a mistake to view everyone as equally guilty. But Albanians, Croats and Bosniaks unquestionably committed crimes against Serb civilians in the 1990s, for which their commanders should have been held responsible. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will not be fondly remembered for many reasons: it has been too slow, too inconsistent, too aloof and too wedded to tortuous process rather than just outcomes. Maybe each of its individual decisions can be defended as just, but I fear the overall result is justice that looks dictated by victors rather than facts.

Karadzic was unquestionably guilty morally and now legally of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of war. While well within its rights to complain that others have not been held accountable for their own misdeeds, the Serbian government is wise to accept, acknowledge and try to move on.