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It’s Time to Test The Karadžić Myth

The man who believed he was more a myth than reality is about to be humbled by a very human court.

By Aleksandar Hemon

In Sarajevo, Radovan Karadžić lived in a building across from my high school. I only found that out recently, as I don’t remember ever seeing him in those days. Granted, this was a while ago—I attended Gimnazija Ognjen Prica from 1979 to 1983, but now it seems to me that I should have noticed him: the huge head, the gray mane, the stern jaw, the deep dimple, the eyes that seemed incapable of producing a non-murderous gaze.

Not remembering him, however, is hardly surprising, as it is only with the after-knowledge of his crimes that I began thinking I might have been able to detect the karadzicness in Karadžić. The fact of the matter is that Karadžić, at that time and right up until before the war, was just an inconspicuous denizen of the city he would set out to destroy— indistinguishable from his environment. In his brilliant essay on Karadžić (“Stocking Hat” in Sarajevo Blues) Semezdin Mehmedinovic writes about thumbing through a 1991/1992 Sarajevo phone book and finding 21 entries under the family name Karadžić. In addition to Radovan, there were “10 Muslims, 9 Serbs and 1 Croat.”

The first time I heard Karadžić’s name was when he became the (huge) head of the SDS. As far as I was concerned, he came out of nowhere. Later, I learned that he was a psychiatrist and a poet, one of those who spent a lot of time in the kafana, drinking, gossiping and reciting Russian poets, thus reaffirming the alleged existence of the Slavic Soul. I was familiar with some of the other Founding SDS Fathers: Nikola Koljevic, Slavko Leovac and Vojislav Maksimovic, all of whom were my ex-professors; Aleksa Buha, a philosophy professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, which I had graduated from; Momcilo Krajisnik, who had worked with my mother at one point; Velibor Ostojic, a speech coach at Radio-Sarajevo, where I had worked, to whom I had been sent in order to fix my mumbling.

But now they were planets in a different universe, all now revolving around Karadžić. In their public appearances they were in stark contrast with Karadžić and his mountain-esque crassness: the professors all looked like professors—intellectual and somewhat out of place in the limelight, while Karadžić reveled in the attention. He was the star of Serbdom, making grand gestures while speaking, making grander pronouncements of the impeding anti-Serb gloom and doom. He projected the image of comfortable ruthlessness, of someone who does not care what others might think, which is always fascinating and frightening to Bosnians, ever mindful of what the people—svijet—might say.

I remember going to an SDS press conference in 1991. Karadžić was at the centre of the desk facing the journalists, his long arms spread like wings, his hands resting on the edges, as if he were ready to lift the desk and hurl it at the leery press. Next to him was Koljevic: small, mousy, behind a large, goggle-like pair of glasses, clearly a supporting actor. Karadžić spoke sternly, unflinchingly, uninterested in charming the press, as if he were doing us all a favour by talking to us at all—all but few chosen press members were in his mind proven enemies of the Serbian people. As usual, he claimed that there was some kind of a threat to Serbdom, and if they didn’t react with determination the Serbs would get “fucked.” He did not apologize for using the profane word in public; indeed, he claimed that it was a legitimate word, often used by the Serbian people. His stubborn crassness suggested his resolve not to mince words, not to participate in all that fuddy-duddying, because there was a job to be done, the job of saving Serbdom at all cost.

It was the same forceful, blatant determination that he projected early in 1992, in the infamous, chilling speech to the Bosnian parliament convened to legislate the independence referendum. Exuding the same ruthless ease, he warned the parliament that the Muslim people risked extermination if they voted for independence. He appeared ready to work on their perishing, and his demeanour hinted that he didn’t mind the work at all. He behaved as if he were issuing a fair warning; he was generously trying to help. That was the first moment, I think, when he assumed the role of the master of life and death of an entire people; it was the commencement of the genocide. He could forgo genocide, he was suggesting, despite all the preparations, if the Muslims were willing to forgo independence, but he was none the less prepared to declare, much like Njegos’s Vladika Danilo, “let it be what cannot be” and unleash the holocaust. It was visible that he enjoyed that power. No wonder the Interpol arrest warrant listed “flamboyant behaviour” as his only distinguishing mark.

It is a mistake to look for psychological continuity in the mind of a war criminal, to look for genocidal proclivities in his or her pre-war life. War and genocide create identities—a war criminal is a different person before and during wartime. Nevertheless, the identities of people like Milosevic and Mladic had been determined by the structures they were part of before the war. The Party taught Milosevic to detect, recruit, use and dispose of allies—one can imagine Milosevic, if the wars of Yugoslavia had not happened, toiling at Party congresses to form useful alliances, quietly amassing wealth and power. Mladic would have continued to be a stern Army officer, finding outlets for his murderous needs within the military structure (which is easy for me to imagine for I had seen him soldiering as the commander of the Stip garrison, where I suffered as a conscript from 1983-84). Karadžić differed from them. He fully existed only when organising the genocide, he was invisible and irrelevant before it, and has been invisible ever since. Karadžić’s star shone only against the dark skies of a vast crime. This is why Karadžić is still popular among the Serbs in the Republika Srpska and Serbia proper: like a mythological being, he came out of nowhere to do what needed to be done—wipe out the “Turks” and create an eternal, heavenly kingdom, completing the mythological job started hundreds of years ago in the Battle of Kosovo. He did not care what the world might say—for the world is but a minor distraction in the eternal Serbian struggle to survive and live as the celestial people; he was ever willing to sacrifice even his moral well being for the people.

While Milosevic’s mythical aura waned because of his self-serving mishandling of the Serbian National Project and while Mladic’s aura never got too excessive because of his perceived military demeanour, Karadžić’s aura was enhanced by his withdrawal into the woodsy, mountainous background after he abandoned all his political positions in 1996. Like a hajduk, the mythological Serbian outlaw, he is a lone wolf preserving Serbdom from perishing, surviving in the face of a great enemy—the “Turks” and the world itself--willing to come again out of his heroic obscurity if necessary.

Karadžić in the The Hague is a remedy to the Serbian nationalist mythology--Scheveningen is not a mythological space, but a prison. There, Karadžić would be in the limelight that would dispel the darkness of the nationalist mythology. He would be at the centre of a legal process, a trial based on documents and testimonies, which would demythologize his actions, and dismantle his criminal universe. The man who thought he was bigger than the world, who believed he was entitled to dispensing divine retributions on behalf of his people, needs to be humbled by the human court of the world. It is time the myth of Karadžić was replaced by the truth of his crimes.

Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian fiction writer living in the US. He is author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere man and The Lazarus Project. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.

Last Picture of Karadžić

Disguised Karadžić 'Gave Spirituality Lectures'

Top war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadžić had been hiding in Belgrade under a false identity as a doctor and gave lectures on spirituality, Balkan Insight has learnt.

"Karadžić was hiding in New Belgrade under a false identity...He was using name of Dragan Dabic," Vukcevic said, adding that the world's most wanted war crimes fugitive "practiced alternative medicine in a private office in Belgrade."

"Karadžić was moving freely in Belgrade. His false identity was so convincing that no one was able to identify him, including his landlord and employer," Vukcevic said.

Balkan Insight has learn that a Belgrade magazine "Healthy Life" ran a series of stories signed by Dragan David Dabic, a doctor from Belgrade.

The man under the same name lectured on healthy living in Belgrade's Ada Ciganlija on May 23.

The employees of the magazine told Balkan Insight that the man shown in the most recent photographed Karadžić as displayed by the Serbian prosecutor, looks absolutely like the contributor.

"I met him in September at a lecture about spirituality. A friend introduced us and he seemed like a very nice man who knows about spirituality... with his long beard and long hair he doesn't resemble Karadžić at all. I would have never guessed," Goran Kojic, the editor in chief of the magazine told Balkan Insight.
"He wrote without a fee... as Dragan Dabic spiritual healer."

Balkan Insight has also obtained a photograph (above) posted on
http://www.sombor-cancer.org.yu/HTML/Zdrav_život.html, which says 'Dr. Dragan Dabic', a neuro-psychiatrist held a lecture in Novi Sad on April 12.

Karadžić, who went under the name DD David, apparently had a website http://www.psy-help-energy.com/Index.html  where he advertised his energy healing treatment for everything ranging from impotence, through to asthma, multiple sclerosis and autism. His method involved tempering with what he called Human Quantum Energy according to a practice he named the David Wellbeing Program.

Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said that security forces arrested the former Bosnian Serb leader in a carefully planned operation, and under minimal security risk for police and the fugitive.

The operation which eventually led to Karadžić's arrest started in the afternoon.

Karadžić was arrested in a operation which initially targeted a group of aides to former Bosnian Serbs military chief Ratko Mladic but Serbian security forces seemed surprised when they stumbled across the other top fugitive.

However, Karadžić’s attorney, Sveta Vujacic, said her client had been arrested on Friday when he was on board a bus. "He just said that these people showed him a police badge and than he was taken to some place and kept in a room. And that is absolutely against the law what they did."

The charges against Karadžić, last amended in May 2000, include genocide, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts, and other crimes committed against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 war.

Read more on Karadžić's arrest here: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/11955/

Last Picture of Karadžić

The International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses events in the Middle East and the Balkans. Jelko Kacin, member of the European Parliament (EP), member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the EP, and rapporteur of the EP for Serbia, took part in the commemoration on the anniversary of the massacre and burial of the victims of genocide in Srebrenica, on the 11th of July 2008. He presents his views and impressions on the event, and on new opportunities for dialogue and understanding, in his article »Srebrenica – 13 Years After«, which is published here in its entirety.


Jelko Kacin, MEP,
Member of the European Parliament (LDS/ALDE/ADLE)
Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the EP and
Rapporteur of the EP for Serbia
 
 
SREBRENICA – 13 YEARS AFTER
 
On Friday, the eleventh of July, I took part in the commemoration on the anniversary of the massacre and burial of 308 Bosniak victims of the Srebrenica genocide that had been identified in the past year. At the cemetery in Potočari, tens of thousands of people gathered and remembered the thousands of innocent victims, and accompanied the remains of the victims on their last journey. Before the burial, many acclaimed figures, mostly politicians, gave a speech, headed by the presiding Chair of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris Silajdžić, the American Ambassador Charles English, and the high representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Miroslav Lajčák, and the vice-president of the European Parliament (EP) Diana Wallis, together with whom I represented the European Parliament. As many others, we laid down flowers and reflected on Srebrenica today. My contemplations are dedicated to the living that struggle with poverty and dream of a future.
 
Although the name of the city, linked to silver mining, points to a bright past, the present is not nearly as promising.
 
On Friday, the President of the Government of Republika srpska (RS), Milorad Dodik, who could have contributed greatly (and decisively) to the soothing and placating of spirits with his presence, was not to be found in Potočari. The next day, however, he was able to come to Srebrenica and take part in a Serbian gathering in the Cultural House in the center of town. The unfortunate Bosniaks had thirteen years ago found themselves, in great numbers, at the wrong time and in the wrong place, in a protected area, and were cruelly disposed of in the aggressive action of »the liberation of Srebrenica from the Turks«, as the then-commanding Ratko Mladić said coldly, and added a frightening conclusion: »»Now the time has come for us Serbs to remind the Turks of what they had been doing to us for centuries…«  …«[1].
 
The Bosniaks, of course, never had been Turks, since they are part of the Slavic population, which in Bosnia and Herzegovina adheres to three faiths: orthodox christianity, roman catholicism, and islam. Whereas the situation in Sandžak in Serbia and in the north of Montenegro is completely different regarding the peaceful co-existence of different ethnicities, relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina are still very tense. How could they be any different? The best illustration of the current situation, in my opinion, is a thought expressed by a young Bosniak during our conversations with the youth of Srebrenica. »I find it impossible to accept the claim that I live in Republika Srpska, because I live in Bosnia and Herzegovina – but my Serbian neighbor and friend, he cannot accept Bosnia and Herzegovina, because he lives in Republika Srpska.«
 
Serbia's President, Boris Tadić, publicly condemns the crimes, acknowledges the genocide and apologizes, but his colleagues from Republika Srpska are far from this. The statement that Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić are most likely (obviously) in Serbia, made by the British Ambassador days after this are therefore important and reflect the evident two-facedness of the countries in the region regarding their arrest and extradition to the Hague. »More light, more action!«, one could paraphrase Goethe. Without full co-operation of all countries in the region with the Hague Tribunal, there will be no settling down and no European future. Is it not perverse that in the previous government of Koštunica, the only non-Serb, a Bosniak, Rasim Ljajić, was the only one responsible for co-operating with The Hague? These countries, and in particular the less developed areas, populated by Bosniaks, are in dire need of development aid and programs for rural development, which can be guaranteed by the EU. Thus the EU is both the means for, as well as the direction to, the future. The only question is – when?
 
On Tuesday, mothers from Srebrenica and Žepe in Nova Kasaba laid down flowers at the place where Serbs, disguised as members of the UN Peacekeeping forces, tricked Bosniak refugees to gather at a football court by the river. On the road from Srebrenica, they were joined by the most exhausted and despaired, hoping for an end to agony and for safety, by those who were unable to travel over the river Jadar to the hills and onwards to Tuzla. From there, two thousand boys and men were taken to the killing fields.
 
In the town Kravice, in the neighboring municipality of Bratunac, only a few kilometers away from Potočari, by the building of the former Agricultural Co-Operative, where Bosniaks from Srebrenica were cruelly tortured, they were not allowed to lay down their flowers. The local inhabitants were opposed to this, and so the mothers and widows were stopped by a cordon of RS police.
 
As long as anywhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, laying down flowers in the memory of those killed in war will be a problem, there will be problems there, as well as in neighboring countries and EU member states.
 
Diana and I decided to suggest to the President's Conference, which prepares and coordinates the work of the EP, to invite the youth of Srebrenica, from both communities, to Brussels. We hope that days of living together, on the road to as well as in the EU, within the framework of EU institutions, will enable them to discover the history, the mistakes, and the revelations of Western Europe. Perhaps this will create new opportunities for dialogue and understanding. Measures – and much effort – are needed to create trust where there is none. Who could do this, if not the youth?
 

Photo: Diana Walis (left) and Jelko Kacin (right) in Srebrenica, 11.07.2008
 
Ljubljana, 20th July 2008                                                                                


International Institute for Middle-East
and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) – Ljubljana


Directors:

Bakhtyar Aljaf   and   Zijad Becirovic, M.Sc.

                     

The International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, regularly analyses events in the Middle East and the Balkans. Dr. Robert J. Donia, President of the Council of the International Institute IFIMES and Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, in his article “Creeping Crisis:  The Serbian Government’s Plan for Kosovo” presents his view on the current situation in Serbia. His article is here published in its entirety.

Dr. Robert J. Donia

President of the Council of the International Institute IFIMES and
Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan

CREEPING CRISIS:  THE SERBIAN GOVERNMENT’S PLAN FOR KOSOVO


    Kosovo Serbs escalated an already-simmering crisis in Kosovo on June 28 by convening the Assembly of the Association of Municipalities of Kosovo and Metohija in Northern Mitrovica.  Formation of the assembly was publicly announced two weeks in advance by Slobodan Samardžic, the Serbian government’s Minister for Kosovo and Metohija.  Samardžic has emerged as the chief promoter of a Serbian plan to chip away at the sovereignty of the newly-independent Republic of Kosovo through repeated local challenges to its authority.  As we noted in our analysis of June 3, 2008 (“Elusive Finality:  Dispatch from Newly-Independent Kosovo,” at ( http://www.ifimes.org/default.cfm?Jezik=en&Kat=10&ID=377), the assembly, and the local councils of Serbs in various Serb-inhabited areas of Kosovo, are modeled closely upon Serbian municipalities and assemblies created by lieutenants of the late President Slobodan Milosevic; in 1990-91 in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Those assemblies and their derivative organs were the primary perpetrators of Serb takeovers and the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs at the beginning of the wars in those countries in 1991-92. 


    June 28 marked the end of a five-month post-independence phase in Kosovo’s history, during which all major actors made their positions clear.  Following their declaration of independence on February 17, 2008, Kosovo’s Albanian leaders expeditiously implemented the Ahtisaari Plan, the short name for the “Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement,” written by UN negotiator Martti Ahtisaari and submitted to the UN Secretary General on March 26, 2007.  Kosovo’s Albanian leaders had reluctantly accepted the plan as a condition of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia during failed efforts to reach agreement with Serbian government negotiators.  Meeting a deadline specified in the Ahtisaari Plan, delegates in the Kosovo Assembly adopted a Constitution and passed 41 legislative acts to implement all provisions mandated in the plan.  The new laws were signed by Kosovo’s president on June 16, the day after independence took effect.  In short, Kosovo’s Albanian leaders have done everything required of them by the Ahtisaari Plan and maintained restraint in the face of rising Serb provocations. 


    On the other hand, ultra-nationalist Serbs, headed by officials of selected ministries in the Republic of Serbia, have undertaken various acts to undermine the government of Kosovo.  After nine years of relatively benign financial support and control over Serb institutions in Kosovo, Belgrade’s officials have changed course in the aftermath of independence and adopted strategies modeled closely on those of the late President Milosevic. They have ordered Serb policemen in the integrated Kosovo Police Service and Serb employees of Kosovo’s municipalities south of the Ibar to walk off the job.  Although the Ahtisaari Plan provided for Serbia’s continued involvement in Kosovo and awarded wide-ranging autonomy to Kosovo’s Serbs, Belgrade-based leaders have isolated and in some cases threatened those who cooperated in establishing the plan-mandated institutions.  Serbian government ministries have staged violent incidents in Belgrade (February 21), Northern Mitrovica (March 17), and the village of Borivojce in Kosovo’s multiethnic Kamenica municipality (June 26).


The Serb plan, in common with those of Milosevic’s lieutenants in 1991 and 1992, aims to contest the jurisdiction of the existing state and to incite conflict between conciliatory Albanians and Serbs, in this case those Serbs who would accept the generous terms of the Ahtisaari Plan and work within the framework of the Kosovo Constitution.  The plan is also intended to provoke Albanians and international security forces to violence in order to discredit them internationally.  The Serbian campaign is such a perfect imitation of Milosevic strategies as to make its activities risibly predictable.  Serbs following Belgrade’s instructions are likely to locate their provocations in multiethnic areas or along ethnic boundary lines.  On June 26, they did just that, as Serbs gathered to protest construction of a mosque in Kamenica municipality, an exemplary multiethnic municipality with a conciliatory mayor.  International security forces can anticipate that Serbs will “spontaneously” erect roadblocks or barriers obstructing free movement of Albanians on major communication routes through Serbian settlements. Various local Serb municipal assemblies and the Assembly of the Association of Serbian Municipalities, illegally constituted in defiance of UNMIK and the laws of Kosovo, may also be expected to issue repeated proclamations and create Serb institutions to rival those specified in the Ahtisaari Plan.  The Serb nationalists have thus far refrained from establishing a separate Serb police force, contenting themselves instead with infiltrating officers of Serbia’s Ministry of the Interior into the Kosovo Police Service.  Any effort to establish a separate Serb police force would be a direct provocation that would invite intervention from KFOR.


    The Serbian-government-led actions constitute a clear and present danger not only to safety and security in Kosovo but to stability throughout the region.  The conduct of Serbian government ministries and parties in Kosovo is an egregious violation of behavior expected of an aspiring member of the European Union; it would be so even under guidelines for relations between constituent polities in Yugoslavia before Milosevic’s dubious legal changes of 1989 and 1990.  As leaders of the US, the European Union, and NATO prepare to hail the imminent formation of a “pro-European” government in Serbia, they should also attend to the grave threat to stability that Serbia is incrementally implementing in Kosovo.


Ljubljana, 08 July 2008

International Institute for Middle-East
and Balkan Studies (IFIMES) - Ljubljana


Directors:

Bakhtyar Aljaf   and   Zijad Becirovic, M.Sc.