Introduction

The countries that have emerged from the ruins of the former Yugoslavia have made steady progress in putting the death and destruction of the past decade behind them. Many of the main perpetrators, including former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, have been arrested and charged with human rights violations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which is currently sitting in The Hague. However, the question of how to confront the recent history of violence remains unresolved.

While international media are now focused elsewhere, the countries in the region still struggle to overcome the economic and political legacy of violent conflict. Serbia, the main aggressor in the Yugoslav wars, faces particular challenges. Milosevic, who is currently on trial in The Hague, still enjoys some support in Serbia. His cronies and the organized crime networks that were legitimized under his regime continue to wield power—and were behind the murder of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic last spring. The assassination of the reformist leader was a major setback to efforts to bring war criminals to justice, as Djindjic had been instrumental in the extradition of some of the ICTY's most notorious defendants, Milosevic among them.

For a roundtable held on October 9, 2003, OSI invited Carla del Ponte, the ICTY's chief prosecutor, and Natasa Kandic, Serbia's leading human rights activist, to discuss how Serbia can move forward and reconcile its past. Del Ponte outlined some of the key issues facing the ICTY, including its 2008 completion deadline, while Kandic focused on the difficulty of prosecuting war crimes in Serbia's current political and social climate. The forum was moderated by Lawrence Weschler, a former staff writer at the New Yorker magazine who is currently the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Summary

Moderator Lawrence Weschler led the discussion by asking whether the ICTY could relieve collective guilt for atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars by assigning culpability to a select few.

Natasa Kandic said that many Serbs are still unwilling to support the tribunal, particularly its prosecution of crimes committed during the war in Kosovo, which ended in 1999. She argued that the Serbian media was biased in its reporting on Kosovo and that much of the public sympathizes only with Kosovo Serbs and continues to blame the Kosovo Albanians for the violence. It is important, therefore, she said, to work to create the conditions necessary for prosecuting past crimes.

It is the mandate of the tribunal, Carla del Ponte said, to deal only with individual crimes, and it is impossible to know what ends her work will achieve. While the ICTY may not facilitate reconciliation, it sends the message to despotic leaders that they can be brought to justice for their crimes. She emphasized, however, that her job was simply to collect evidence and uncover the truth, not to be an activist.

Kandic said that Milosevic's continuing influence was an obstacle to progress in Serbia, and pointed out that many Serbian politicians still have ties to the criminal networks that had risen to power under his government. These same criminals were responsible for some of the atrocities committed during the wars, but many Serbs accept the presence of the mafia as a way of life. A number of those responsible for crimes in Kosovo returned home to Serbia, which has become a haven for war criminals. Del Ponte agreed that mafias are often embraced by their local communities, both in Serbia and elsewhere. She said that while she was prosecuting members of the organized crime networks in Sicily, many supported the mafia—people did not view it as a criminal subculture, but rather as a provider of jobs and protector of the community.

Del Ponte then addressed the issue of the ICTY's two crucial deadlines: it must complete its investigative work by 2004 and its trials by 2008. Del Ponte set these dates last year, after increased pressure from the United Nations Security Council to devise the ICTY's completion strategy, but was now asking the Security Council for an extension. The work of the ICTY would be for naught, she said, if such time limits allowed fugitive war criminals to evade trial. A relaxation of the deadlines is necessary to ensure that the most egregious perpetrators, some of whom are still in hiding, are prosecuted by the tribunal. The ICTY has no authority over local police, and therefore can only extradite people with the cooperation of national governments.

The Serbian government was not cooperating, del Ponte said, in the case of Srebrenica, a Bosnian city where more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in 1995. While two of those accused of war crimes in Srebrenica are pleading guilty, neither the Serbian government nor the international community is throwing its full weight behind the prosecution of those responsible for the massacre. There is a reluctance to uncover the truth.

Although many in Serbia still cling to a sense of victimization, Kandic believed some Serbs were beginning to understand the importance of the ICTY. She stressed that the continuing work of the Tribunal will help create a national dialogue about responsibility.