Calling a Crime a Crime : For both moral and political reasons, world must act on U.N. report on Balkans atrocities

The United Nations on June 2 issued its final report on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. The report accused Bosnia’s Serbs of crimes against humanity, especially in the once mainly Muslim, now “ethnically cleansed” town of Prijedor in northwest Herzegovina. Of the slaughter or expulsion of more than 50,000 of Prijedor’s people, the report said, “It is likely to be confirmed in court under due process of law that these events constitute genocide.”

But will there be a trial? The heavily documented report has been forwarded to the tribunal established in The Hague to try those indicted, but the U.N. Security Council has not named a top prosecutor, and the report has been all but ignored in the world press. Britain and France reportedly believe that the prosecution of war criminals must not be allowed to impede a peace settlement. The United States, which once called Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic a war criminal in so many words, may now, tacitly, be deferring to its European allies.

But the presence of presumptive war criminals in positions of authority in the breakaway Serb republics adjacent to official Bosnia-Herzegovina is not just a moral issue. It also bears directly on the political question of whether the international community can reasonably recognize those republics and compel affected Muslims and Croats to submit to their rule.

Trying to set war crimes aside as a secondary political issue in the Balkans is like trying to set terrorism aside as a political issue in Northern Ireland. It is rather less reasonable to expect Muslims and Croats to submit to rule by Karadzic than it would be to expect Ulster Protestants to submit to rule by Irish Republican Army leader Gerry Adams. Whatever the salons of diplomacy may decree on a point like this will inevitably be overruled by terrified people on the scene.

There is something deep in human nature that wants to look away from atrocity. Unfortunately, maintaining a discreet silence about the war crimes report would be not only a moral disgrace but, in the long run, a political blunder.