By Sheri Fink (International Herald Tribune)
Saturday, July 12, 2003

 

SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Friday marked the eighth anniversary of
Europe's largest massacre in a half a century. Beginning on July 11th, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces murdered an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. Most of those accused of organizing the genocide remain at large. The United States must take the lead in bringing them to justice. America cannot narrow its focus to its most recent foe, Saddam Hussein. It must also pursue evildoers of past tragedies, such as the criminals of the Bosnian massacre. Only once the United States has captured, prosecuted, and punished such long-standing international criminals will it be a credible force for establishing security and a civil society in places such as Iraq. While President George W. Bush vows to remove top former Ba'ath party and security officials from Iraq, U.S. troops have still not completed their analogous mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The consequences of the prolonged failure to apprehend Bosnia's top military and political war crimes fugitives are clear; nationalists in Bosnia continue to hold sway and the rule of law is too weak to permit the departure of roughly 12,000 international forces, about 3,100 of them American. Do we remember what happened in Srebrenica eight years ago? Forces under the command of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic herded thousands of Bosnian Muslim captives into houses and barns, blindfolded them, tied their hands behind their backs, tortured some and then threw grenades through the windows and fired automatic rifles at them. The murders took place as U.S. surveillance craft flew above and UN peacekeepers patrolled nearby. Srebrenica had been declared a "safe area" by the United Nations. It was under Serb attack for five days before falling. During those five days, international peacekeeping forces did not fire a single shot at the Serb attackers. And although NATO flew overhead on patrol, and NATO air support was requested numerous times by the Dutch UN commander whose troops were under attack on the ground, no bombs fell until Srebrenica did. The crimes in Srebrenica have been determined by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to meet the definition of genocide, a crime the United States is committed under international law to "prevent and punish." The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, says she knows where the most notorious fugitives are hiding.

Del Ponte has traced Bosnian Serb Army General Ratko Mladic to Serbia, where, just last month, the United States unlocked $50 million of aid after Secretary of State Colin Powell certified that Yugoslavia was cooperating with the tribunal. Congress must make any further American aid to Serbia contingent upon Mladic's arrest. But the responsibility doesn't end there. The Bosnian Serbs' wartime political leader, President Radovan Karadzic, reportedly has been hiding in eastern Bosnia for years, practically under the noses of U.S. forces. Those forces are authorized, and in some situations required, by the 1995 Dayton Accords, which ended Bosnia's war, to arrest indicted war criminals. The American forces in Bosnia have the same moral and legal duty to rid Bosnia of Karadzic as they do to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The United States must not wait any longer. In the words of Theodor Meron, the New York University professor who now serves as president of the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, "justice delayed can sometimes be justice denied." As pressure grows for the tribunal to complete its work, the nearly unthinkable possibility grows that the architects of genocide in Bosnia will elude justice. The United States must ensure that the remnants of the bloodthirsty and criminal regime that ruled Serb-held Bosnia, that massacred the men and boys of Srebrenica, and that still oppose efforts to create peace and stability in the Balkans, be apprehended. On Friday, relatives of more than 250 Srebrenicans exhumed from mass graves reburied their loved ones in Srebrenica. At the same time, in Iraq, people were digging through Saddam Hussein's mass graves to find and unearth their kin. How can the Iraqis believe our promises when we have failed the Srebrenicans so miserably? The writer is author of "War Hospital," a recounting of the Srebrenica massacre. She currently serves with the humanitarian organization International Medical Corps in Iraq.