Serbian Nationalists and Karadzic

It's no surprise that Serbian nationalists believe that the Hague ICTY is incapable of providing Radovan Karadic with a fair trial. That said, the trial is going forward. One of the most recent developments concerns Karadzic's attempt to sack his court-appointed attorney. Karadzic is doing everything in his power to delay the trial, and continues to insist that he is innocent on all 11 counts of war crimes. His most infamous act was to oversee the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. Karadzic continues to argue that war war was avoidable and that Alija Izetbegovic as well as foreign (German) interference was largely responsible for the outbreak of war. Also, there's no denying that the origins of the conflict are difficult to unravel. Still, this trial is not ultimately about establishing blame for the outbreak of the war. Karadzic needs to stand trial for specific war crimes.

More about Karadzic

From Serbian broadcaster B92:
Radovan Karadzic continues to insist that Richard Holbrooke offered him a deal back in '95. According to Karadzic, Holbrooke (and by extension, the Clinton administration) promised him amnesty if he agreed to withdraw "from political and public life".
For his part, Holbrooke is about to join Hillary Clinton in the new Obama adminstration as an emissary. Holbrooke gets "the tough (and tougher) Southwest Asia portfolio, which includes India, Afghanistan and Pakistan".

Serbia and Russia: Slavic Brothers Always

Here's an interesting story from NPR. The Russians want to put a gas pipeline through Serbia. Apparently, many Serbians "welcome" Gazprom's bid to own a controlling interest in Serbian state gas and oil. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Serbs and Russians have cultivated "pan-Slavic" nationalism. More recently, the Russians supported Serbia during the Yugoslav war and during the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
There's no doubt that this move will serve to strengthen Russia's geo-political position in Europe even as it strengthens Serbia's legitimacy in the Balkans. In recent years, both the Russians and Serbians have felt that Americans and Western Europeans have misused and misunderstood them. There's little doubt that such feelings will drive them to work more closely with one another.

Criticism of the ICTY in the Hague

Marko Attila Hoare's essay (12/24/08) is highly critical of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He compares the course of its trials to those at Nuremberg following WWII, and concludes that the "difference in aim and organization" between the two insitutions explain why one was far more successful than the other. The ICTY, in his opinion, has proved "toothless" because it sought reconciliation rather than justice. This, in turn, has been the result of the international community's failure to "impose a narrative" assigning blame for the "War of Yugoslav Succession". Ultimately, all sides feel simultaneously victimized and vindicated. "There is a lesson to be learned from the respective experiences of the IMT and ICTY: so far as war-crimes are concerned, there can be no real justice without the real defeat of the perpetrators."