Last night I was back again at the Frontline Club to hear Allan Little talk to Nick Hawton about the latter’s new book The Quest for Radovan Karadzic:

When everybody else seemed to have given the hunt, one journalist doggedly followed his trail, travelling from the snow-capped mountains of Montenegro to the killing fields of eastern Bosnia to the corridors of power in Belgrade, in search of the man accused of some of the most horrific crimes committed in Europe since the Second World War…

He uncovered a tale of intrigue, murder, betrayal, spies, dirty deals, international politics and innocent victims…

The event was well attended with many Balkanites and people who had followed events closely there at different points, including a few who had met Karadzic himself.

Nick Hawton (who knows the region as a BBC journalist) gave plenty of sensible insights into the Karadzic saga. He argued that as he understood the sequence of events, soon after the Dayton Accords in 1995 Karadzic started to prepare his hideaway in Belgrade and indeed was there for most of the period until his arrest.

Hawton said that If Holbrooke did ‘do a deal’ with Karadzic, where was the written evidence? Maybe there was an informal understanding, but why would Karadzic have believed that that might bind the Tribunal? If Western intelligence agencies had not managed to identify exactly where he was in all that time, "Disgraceful!"

Hawton said that it was clear that former Serbian leader Kostunica had known where Karadzic was hiding – when Kostunica fell from power in 2008 Karadzic promptly was arrested, although he had been under close surveillance for some time before the arrest.

I threw in a generous dose of my own take on these matters, to some interest from the audience.

Some Q&A below to sum up my view for the record.

Remember the Wider Context

From 1991-2008 there were several overlapping phases in the extended Karadzic drama:

  • 1991-95:  Bosnia Conflict: Karadzic a familiar interlocutor with Western diplomats and peacemakers
  • ICTY ‘secret’ indictment: no willingness to arrest him on the part of Western governments – ICTY and its authority were still developing
  • ICTY open indictment:  Karadzic starts to become persona non grata (not invited to Dayton) but is still politically active
  • Run-up to 1996 post-Dayton elections:  vital for President Clinton that these pass off peacefully with Karadzic not in evidence (Clinton’s own re-election looming that year). NB NATO/SFOR rules of engagement do not instruct IFOR/SFOR troops actively to track down and arrest war crimes suspects. Karadzic ‘persuaded’ (in part with pressure from Belgrade) to withdraw from public life
  • 1997:  US/UK with others decide actively to try to arrest ICTY indictees, starting with ‘low-hanging fruit’. British special forces kill Serb ICTY indictee Drljaca when he resists arrest (Note: this insanely is denounced in Sarajevo Bosniac/Muslim media as pro-Serb British plot). Other ICTY indictees start to go underground. Karadzic known to be lurking in Republika Srpska, leaning on RS leaders to go slow on Dayton cooperation. Other ‘lesser’ indictees nabbed by IFOR/SFOR. Karadzic sinks from view.
  • 1998-2000:  Kosovo conflict erupts. Milosevic too indicted by ICTY, and has no reason to cooperate with West to arrest Karadzic
  • 2000:  Milosevic falls. Kostunica (friend of Karadzic) becomes FRY President on pro-reform ticket; refuses to do throw his personal authority behind bringing Karadzic/Mladic to justice. Top Serbia reformer PM Djindjic manoeuvres towards ICTY cooperation, with various senior Serbs surrendering to ICTY
  • 2003:  PM Djindjic murdered – gangster tendencies re-assert themselves in Serbia
  • 2008:  Kostunica falls over his inflexible Kosovo/Europe policies. Reformer Tadic triumphs. Karadzic arrested and sent to ICTY

The point of rehearsing this history is to bring out that at no time until just before he was arrested did we have a coincidence of Western and Serbian top-level political will to effect Karadzic’s arrest.

You got Saddam. Why not Karadzic/Mladic?

Exactly. Western forces arrested Saddam some months after invading Iraq when huge military forces occupied the country and could throw their technical and personnel weight behind finding him.

Had we done that in 1996 Karadzic/Mladic could have been arrested quickly. But President Clinton would not authorise the action – fear of another Blackhawk Down fiasco in an election year. Holbrooke says this in so many words in his book. Thereafter it got harder, the more so as NATO’s presence in Bosnia ebbed and Milosevic was indicted.

Why did you smart MI6/CIA not find him in all that time?

Have you any idea what’s involved? The Serbs are outstanding improvisers. They consume grilled meat topped with generous helpings of Inat in huge proportions. British and American officials are followed constantly and stick out like sore thumbs. A heavy disinformation campaign was waged to keep us running around chasing dead-end leads.

That said, we tried mighty hard, and I believe we got very close to identifying him and his whereabouts on a couple of occasions in recent years. But getting close and then propelling the action needed to get him arrested and transferred to ICTY in the face of stalling from the Serbian top leadership was doomed to failure. Even had the lugubriously nationalistic Kostunica been minded to put the word down to Karadzic to hand himself in, the murder of Zoran Djindjic did not encourage risk-taking.

Why could not the SAS go in to arrest him without Serbia’s consent?

The prime responsibility for arresting an ICTY indictee lies with the country where that indictee is located. Given the disinformation being deliberately thrown around to create uncertainty, no British leader properly could authorise a military snatch raid knowing that there could be a shoot-out leading to British/local deaths – and maybe Karadzic/Mladic not even there.

Where’s Mladic?

Pass. But probably surrounded by a group of tough Serb soldiers whose orders include not letting him be taken alive?

Could you yourself have done more?

I wish that the ethical foreign policy Labour Government had not allowed the Americans to trump my own idea of trying to persuade Karadzic to surrender. Without the highest-level authority I had no safe or meaningful way to proceed. So, no.

Lessons?

Front-load for success. There is never a better time to hit these villains than when your force and resolve are at their height and you have Momentum, as NATO had in 1996 and the Americans had in 2003 in Iraq. If you let these issues get tangled up in your own domestic politics as President Clinton did (and maybe all things considered that indeed was the wisest call for him to make), you miss the moment and make things far harder for yourself and any passing peace process. Conspiracy theories grow like weeds and your local credibility wanes.

But there always are wider considerations at stake, especially in a democracy – that’s life.