BALKANS: Ruling Fails to Bring Reconciliation

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Mar 7 2007 (IPS) - “Regardless of the decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), I know what I will tell my children about the war,” Bosnia-Herzegovina leader Zdravko Komsic said after the ICJ cleared Serbia of genocide in the 1992-95 war.

The ICJ ruled last week that genocide was committed only in Srebrenica in July 1995. At least 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were executed then by the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) that overran the enclave in eastern Bosnia.

Serbia did not participate in the genocide, but failed to influence the BSA to prevent it, the international court ruled.

Komsic’s reaction reflects how complex the situation remains in the Balkans, where the wars of bloody disintegration of former Yugoslavia still remain the main cause of prolonged hatred and deep mistrust between millions of Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.

Hopes of bringing the nations closer together after the ICJ ruling remain as far as ever.

“The ruling of the ICJ can in no way bring moral satisfaction to the victims of genocide in Bosnia,” Sarajevo leader Sakib Softic told local media.

“It will become a ground for reconciliation between Bosniaks and Serbs only if the whole Serb nation is ready to take responsibility for genocide being carried out in its name over the whole territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” he added.

Head of the Muslim community in Bosnia Mustafa Ceric reacted more sharply. “I am disappointed with the decision of the ICJ. Genocide in Bosnia is an undisputed fact that we all know about,” he told media in Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

The war in Bosnia took about 100,000 lives; most victims were Bosniak Muslims. Another 11,000 people were killed in the war in Croatia that also ended in 1995.

But while clearing Serbia of any hand in genocide, the ICJ said it is the Serb duty to hand over Gen. Ratko Mladic of the Bosnian Serb Army to the international war crimes tribunal. Mladic was commander of the BSA, and he has been in hiding for more than 10 years.

“The indicted war criminals should be sent to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that will establish the truth of what happened in the Balkans wars,” Vesna Pesic, leader of the small parliamentary party Civil Alliance of Serbia (GSS) told IPS.

“Among all of us – Croats, Serbs or Bosniaks – there remains a level of emotional tension that cannot be surmounted if the truth is not learnt. Without truth, there will be no real reconciliation in the long run,” she said.

One of the major obstacles to real reconciliation remains the issue how the wars in former Yugoslavia ended.

The matter was officially closed through the internationally sponsored Dayton Peace Accords signed by leaders who participated in the wars – former Bosniak president Alija Izetbegovic and his Croatian and Serbian counterparts Franjo Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic.

Today, when all three signatories to the agreement are dead, their complicated legacy hangs ominously over the region.

“Peace was installed with the help of the same leaders that led their nations to wars,” international law professor Vojin Dimitrijevic told IPS. “It was an illusion that with such a legacy they could lead their nation to reconciliation in the future.”

“It will take years to promote goodwill for a new level of mutual understanding,” head of Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights Zarko Puhovski told Belgrade B92 Radio. “With or without the ICJ ruling, all former warring nations remain entrenched in their beliefs.”

The prevailing feeling in Bosnia and in Croatia is that Serbia is to blame for the warfare that led to the killings and to economic devastation. Bosniak Muslims and Croats are commonly described as victims of wars instigated by Serbia.

Official propaganda in Croatia and Bosnia, and the media in the two countries do not acknowledge that any war crimes were committed against the large Bosnian or Croatian Serb population. They say Croatia and Bosnia were defending themselves against aggression.

Unclear casualty figures also stand in the way of reconciliation. The earlier stand in Sarajevo was that 250,000 were killed in the fighting. It was only some years ago that an internationally sponsored project led by Mirsad Tokaca of the Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo began to collect evidence on war victims.

The research produced a figure of 97,901 killed, of all ethnic backgrounds. Tokaca’s findings enraged Bosniak Muslim politicians.