Unsettling the Score

As neighbors settle matters in court, so do countries. Namely, Bosnia, on behalf of the uncountable number of people killed during the '92-95 war, took their Eastern neighbor and former occupier, Serbia, to The Hague, on the grounds of genocide. In a historical case for the World Court, the United Nation's highest court, decided after years of waiting for trial and months in deliberations, to exempt Serbia for genocide, 13-2, however the court ruled that Serbia failed to prevent genocide where Srebrenica* is concerned.

*The massacre of Srebrenica involved the deliberate execution of 8,000 Muslim men by Bosnian Serbs. This is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. For the record, the massacre also resulted in the systematic rape of tens of thousands of Muslim women. The state of Serbia, which once housed Milosevic and his regime, funded and assisted the Bosnian Serbs in this massacre that is located in the eastern region of Bosnia, an ethnic enclave of Bosniaks, (which denotes, Muslim). This strategic area that lies on the border of Serbia would compromise the boundary and border for the creation of Srpska, the state carved out for Bosnian Serbs. On those grounds, ethnic cleansing was the campaign waged by the army of the Republika Srpska and a paramilitary unit from Serbia, called "The Scorpions."


This controversial case is major in its precedents and ramifications.

• For starts, this is the first time the ICJ or World Court has ruled over states. (Normally it handles matters of sovereignty and diplomatic relations).
• It is also unprecedented for one state to sue another, i.e. "The Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina V. The People's Kingdom of Serbia"
• Furthermore, it is the first for a state to sue another state over genocide.
• To prove genocide is not as easy as pointing to mass graves and hearing widows and survivor stories as with the noble Truth and Reconciliation Act in South Africa. And in this case, it is complicated by semantics and convention codes on what is definitively genocide and intent of genocide, not to mention the rather ambivalent twin, "ethnic cleansing." Both of which involve the deliberate commitment to "destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group" (Geneva Convention, 1948).

What Bosnia sought out was the recognition of human ambush and the compensation for it, as to this day, some 16 years after the fact, no formal reconciliations or apologies have been exchanged. An estimated $60 billion was the asking price, a price Serbia cannot credit to its inflated dinar-000 unit economy.

What Serbia got at the end of the day, is redemption. Bosnia, in as much as it has moved on, suffers a blow from this. While Srebrenica goes acknowledged and has been from films to survivor stories broadcasted on a global scale, there remains these figures that are hard to swallow. As the result of the war, an estimated two million people were displaced, some 300,000 were killed, countless raped, tortured harassed and damaged. One development on the legal front, is that gender-based war crimes has reached the UN Courts, albeit the jurisdiction goes into effect, for cases after July 1.

In some respects, this case exonerates Serb consciousness from the public eye (except their pal, Putin et co. have always been comrades). But this historical event is not over. The Hague still has other guests invited for a visit to the people's court or International War Crimes Tribunal, where Milosevic was tried and convicted. Those guests have been specifically invited by the Judges of this case, none other than the fugitives, Ratko Mladic, a Serb and Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb wanted for genocide.

With the growing cohesiveness of world bodies and governmental organisations such as the European Union, NATO and the UN; states that fail to comply will not be dealt with impunity. There are consequences. Some of which have already had repercussions such as the Serbian economy. So, there remains growing pressure on Serbia to hand over the war criminals that they are assumed to be hiding. To continue to ignore this, is again, in violation of the 1948 Geneva Convention, which requires the punishment of perpetrators. This means other nation-states hiding or not detaining war criminals such as say, Sudan, also must follow suit, where Darfur is concerned.

The New York Times reports: “It is not just the Milosevic regime that was held in violation; the new Serbia is now held in violation as well,” said Phon van den Biesen, a Dutch lawyer and a leader of the Bosnian legal team. “Until it corrects this by making arrests, this is bound to have an adverse effect on decisions around Europe, and in the European Parliament.”

Play-by-Play:

This case turned into a smoking gun, full of cheap shots and misfires. It was first filed in 1993 by Bosnia, notably, right in the thicket of the siege on Sarajevo. Yugoslavia, at the time, run by Milosevic and hence Serbia, rebutted that the ICJ doesn't hold jurisdiction. It didn't until '97. And during that year to play to win, Milosevic, ever the recalcitrant politician, countered the accusations and waged a genocide against Serbs. This claim was eventually withdrawn from the court by the new Serbia once Milosevic passed on. More legal debacles continued to slow the case. Meanwhile, two years later in '99, Serbia tries NATO for genocidal crimes against Belgrade during the Kosovo warring. This case was rejected as at the time, Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN at the time. (We'll return to Kosovo in a future blog, as that is the true hot potato.) Not to exclude Croatia, the country that is most attune to these play-by-plays as they await their court case against Serbia: genocide. The tag-on-the-toe reads an asking price at $29 billion for compensation during the war.

The Hague is not a popular destination around here...