Halfway down the Danube

Justice and Trouble

A good article about the slow process of justice in the Balkans. (Via Amygdala.) It's about the Hague Tribunal and its side effects on Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia.

(Unfortunately it's the New York Times Review of Books, which moves their articles into a subscription-only archive after a week or two. So if you're going to read it, read it now.)

I was a bit hesitant when I saw it was by Tim Judah, because I've disagreed with some stuff he's written in the past; I think he was a bit soft on the Serbs. But this piece is very even-handed.

I do have some quibbles. I think he gives an exaggerated impression of the importance of Hague indictments in the collapse of Serbia's coalition government. A lot of those guys hated each others' guts from the beginning. They were a ramshackle alliance with nothing in common but overthrowing Milosevic, and some of them not even that. So the Hague played a rather small role in pushing them over the edge.

(On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the Hague indictments played a role in the death of Prime Minister Djindjic. But then, Djindjic was killed by people who had gotten very used to having their own way, and very ready to use violence when they didn't get it. So if it hadn't have been that, likely it would have been something else.)

I also think Judah's a little too easy on Carla del Ponte. Although she's been the regular subject of adulatory profiles in the British and European media, I've been distinctly underwhelmed by her tactical effectiveness as a prosecutor.

Mind you, I find her statement that she warned the Serbian government about upcoming indictments -- but to no effect -- altogether plausible. Mr. Micawber had nothing on the DOS coalition. With a few notable exceptions (Dinkic, Vlahovic) they spent three years living from day to day.

Anyhow. For what it's worth, I think that the Hague tribunal is indeed a lot of trouble. It's inconvenient, is doing a lot of political collateral damage (including harm to the innocent and not-so-guilty), is not very efficient, and is costing much more money than it should.

But, yes, I still I think it's worth it. On a moral level, to try for justice imperfectly is stilll better than not trying for justice at all. On a practical level, it's establishing a vastly useful precedent. (Okay, re-establishing it, but Nuremberg was a while ago and I don't think one set of war crimes trials every 50 years is unreasonable.)

And also, it's going to make it harder -- not impossible; it's never impossible; but harder -- for the various factions to write their own little histories and so to justify the next round.

Or so I can hope.

Posted by douglas at December 27, 2003 11:58 PM