Covering Karadzic The rise and fall of a genocidal leader "The butcher of Bosnia"
Covering Karadzic
The rise and fall of a genocidal leader
When I first met Radovan Karadžić in Sarajevo in 1990, the psychiatrist-turned-politician seemed to prefer reciting his poems to talking politics. I thought his poetry was bad, but maybe Serbian epic style was lost on me as a reporter covering Yugoslavia. His jowly face was topped by a flying shock of salt-and-pepper hair. Karadžić said he wanted Serbs to have equal rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of six republics in the defunct communist federation which was holding its first multiparty elections.
Then, Karadžić fancied himself an urban intellectual. But he was born and raised in Montenegro, and to Sarajevo's elite he always remained an outsider. Karadžić had already caught the eye of Serbian nationalists who saw in him a charismatic true believer.
Over the next year his nationalist rhetoric escalated sharply as it became apparent that Yugoslavia was hurtling towards disintegration. In an address to Bosnia's parliament, he warned that the republic's Muslims would "disappear" if Bosnia tried to break away from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. My friends in Sarajevo did not believe that war was inevitable. But doom seemed to hang over the Bosnian capital.
Once in the café of a Belgrade hotel, Karadžić casually drew maps for me on plain white paper showing how he would partition a country whose population of 4.3 million Muslims, Serbs and Croats was so mixed that any division meant war. His maps always left Bosnia's Muslims wedged in a stranglehold between Serbs and Croats in a statelet that had no prospect of survival. Many times over the next few years, I saw similar maps, sometimes done by Croat nationalists, sometimes done by Serbs.
In August 1992, on the eve of a tour around detention camps in Serb-held parts of Bosnia, we ate dinner together in the mountain capital of his self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb state. Karadžić said the tours would convince the world that he had nothing to hide. Stick-thin Muslim men standing shirtless against barbed wire fences too scared to say a word told another story. Tens of thousands of Muslims were held in these wretched camps, and it later would emerge that thousands were summarily murdered.
Over glasses of wine and dinnner, he offered to turn off the electricity in the hospital so that I could have light in my hotel room, and he bragged about how big his country had become. By then, his forces controlled some two-thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina, displacing a million and more Muslims and Croats.
As the months of war dragged on with Serb guns targeting Sarajevo, Karadžić took to donning a camouflage uniform. He struck proud poses with visiting fellow nationalists from Russia as they took turns firing shots into the capital, where more than 10,000 people were killed during the siege.
Outside the war zone, Karadžić liked fine suits and apparently had a taste for late nights of gambling. Much of the summer of 1993 was spent in Geneva, where international mediators brought the country's leaders together for peace talks. One day, I was waiting impatiently for an interview in front of his swanky hotel suite. Karadžić was late. His bodyguards paced up the corridors. Finally, they agreed I could go inside. He was half-dressed and his face was still puffy and creased with sleep.
This was not a man who cared about the success of the peace talks. He had slept right through the morning negotiations.
Endless rounds of peace talks in different European cities followed as the war dragged on month after month. Karadžić seemed to enjoy the change of scenery.
In 1995 came the event that made Western military intervention inevitable: the attack on Srebrenica, a mining town in the Drina River valley, which was home to 40,000 Muslims, mostly refugees, who were supposed to have been enjoying United Nations protection. Karadžić and the Bosnian Serbs' top military commander, General Ratko Mladic, allegedly ordered the execution of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys who had been taken captive, their hands bound in wire ligatures, and blindfolded.
The international tribunal indicted Karadžić and Mladic in mid-1995, and the counts against them were later expanded to include the Srebrenica killings. He did not go underground immediately; he seemed to thumb his nose at the indictments. But soon after the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia (to which Karadžić and his allies were not a party), he was forced by Western mediators-led by American envoy Richard Holbrooke-to withdraw from political leadership. At the outset, people rallied around him, protecting him. Posters appeared with his image in Serb-held towns.
He disappeared in 1998, becoming the most elusive of the long roster of suspects indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. During Karadžić's twelve years on the run, I sometimes wondered how this man from a tiny mountain village who so desired to be in the center of world attention coped with a life in disguise, reportedly hiding out in monasteries or caves. But no one suspected that he was living in Belgrade practicing alternative medicine, operating his own web site to market some mysterious concoction called Human Quantum Energy, supposedly able to cure a panoply of diseases from cancer to multiple sclerosis.
The banality of his capture-on a bus between Belgrade and a garrison town on its outskirts where Serbian police once tried to hide the bodies of Albanian civilians they had killed in Kosovo-should not have come as a surprise. Isn't everything that touches genocide banal? Looking like a bloated Leo Tolstoy, Karadžić the poet, Karadžić the former leader of a country of his own proclaiming, surely did not want to be captured in this way.
Karadžić's arrest shows that the authorities in Serbia, under President Boris Tadic, are serious about being a full partner with the European Union and the United States. As importantly, the arrest demonstrates to the Serbian people that their government is confident enough in its legitimacy to risk a nationalist backlash by bringing a war criminal to justice. For the people of Bosnia, whose lives were upended, Karadžić's arrest is a vital step in healing the wounds of a not-so-distant past.
My phone rang late Monday night in New York. It was past midnight in the Balkans. An old friend from Sarajevo, called, asking if it was too late. Only 12 years too late, I said.
Laura Silber, co-author of "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation," covered the Balkan wars for The Financial Times. She is currently senior policy adviser at The Open Society Institute.
© 2008
Timeline: The Life of Radovan Karadzic
NPR.org, July 22, 2008 · Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested Monday on charges related to genocide and war crimes during the Bosnian war. He had been living as a fugitive for more than a decade. Here's a timeline of key events in his life.
June 1945 - Karadzic is born in the former Yugoslav Republic, in what is now Montenegro.
July 1990 - Karadzic co-founds the Serbian Democratic Party, a Serbian nationalist party in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
January 1990 - Slovenian and Croatian delegates walk out of a Yugoslav Communist Party Congress, presaging the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation over the next few years.
October 1991 - Karadzic leads a move to create "Serb autonomous provinces" in Bosnia, which were represented by a separate Serb assembly.
February/March 1992 - Bosnian Serbs boycott a referendum in which the country's Muslims and Croats vote to declare independence from Yugoslavia.
April 1992 - The United Nations recognizes Bosnia as an independent state. Bosnian Serbs lay siege to the capital city, Sarajevo.
May 1992 - Karadzic is named first president of the Bosnian Serb Republic.
Summer/fall 1992 - The Bosnian Serb army and Serb paramilitary groups go on to occupy about 70 percent of the country. Serb forces systemically drive Muslims from the towns and villages they capture, a process they call "ethnic cleansing."
April 1993 - The U.N. declares "safe havens" in six cities in eastern Bosnia, including Srebrenica and Gorazde. People in these towns are declared to be under the protection of U.S. peacekeepers.
February 1994 - NATO becomes involved in enforcing a U.N. no-fly zone over Bosnia. NATO jets shoot down four Serb aircraft over central Bosnia.
March 1995 - Karadzic orders his army to tighten the siege on Srebrenica, already facing a humanitarian crisis because Serb forces refused to let supply convoys enter the city.
July 1995 - Serb troops occupy the U.N. "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Serb forces round up about 8,000 Muslim men and boys and slaughter them.
Summer 1995 - The Bosnian Muslim-Croat alliance launches an operation that re-captures much of western Bosnia from the Serbs.
September 1995 - NATO expands air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces and infrastructure.
November 1995 - The war ends with the Dayton Peace Agreement, reached after U.S.-backed negotiations.
1996 - Karadzic goes into hiding to avoid international warrants for his arrest.
July 2008 - Karadzic is arrested in Serbia by security forces.
Questions & Answers on the arrest of Radovan Karadzic
Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's most wanted war crimes fugitives, was arrested in Belgrade after 11 years on the run, provoking questions of how he was able to hide out for so long and what his arrest means for the Balkans.
The director of media and information for the International Crisis Group in Brussels, Andrew Stroehlein, discusses the landmark arrest.
Why did it take so long to catch Radovan Karadzic?
The Serbian government probably had very good information as to where he was but didn't have the will to act. It's obvious that they knew where he was with his new age medical lectures advertised all over the Internet over the past 11 years. It is really a matter of political will in Belgrade. But, remember, he's not the last one. This is one down two to go. (Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic are still wanted by the Hague Tribunal)
What is Serbia's interest in arresting Karadzic now?
They realize that in order to move forward toward European integration and eventual candidacy for membership in the European Union that many EU member states won't tolerate that unless they see progress on bringing in Europe's most wanted men who are alleged to have committed the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.
Will Karadzic be turned over to The Hague?
I think it would be incredibly difficult for Belgrade to hold onto him for too long. Their excuse for too long was that they didn't know where he was, but they can't use that excuse any longer. They'll have a few days to make the legal handover technically work, but will be under tremendous international pressure if they don't hand him over within a couple weeks. What would their excuse be?
Do you think the other war crimes suspects wanted by The Hague, Mladic and Hadzic, will be turned in?
It's hard to say because we don't really know how the arrest happened. We don't really know if this is the first of several or not. Belgrade has moved so slowly on this issue that I can't see that they'll do this all at once, but it would be nice if they did.
How will his arrest affect Bosnia?
It's a really important step in terms of reconciliation or at least getting beyond the past. For the long term social health, breaking with its deadly past is a pretty major step. It's partially symbolic, but the symbol has incredible meaning for those who suffered through this war. It's an important step that should've happened a long time ago.
How will it affect the future of Serbia?
At the moment it doesn't seem like there's too much unrest in Serbia. There's some shock, surprise, and confusion over how he led a life that was in the open -- that's caused some amusement. But, I don't think this a make or break issue in Serbia anymore; it's not the potent symbol it used to be.
It's a very fractured public. There are some very strong pro-European voices in Serbia and some much more nationalistic voices. There's also a practical group that even if they aren't pro-EU, they realize that the EU's really the only the game in town, and for economic reasons alone it's the only place to be if their country is going to get ahead.
No-one will be running through streets cheering, but I doubt there will be anyone protesting it either. These two fugitives (Karadzic and Mladic) are not a big enough issue for the Serbian public anymore.
Editor's note: The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.
(CNN) -- Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic was working at a medical practice in Belgrade using a false identity and heavily disguised by a snow white beard before his arrest brought an end to more than a decade on the run, Serbian officials said Tuesday.
An undated photo shows Radovan Karadzic with glasses, and with long, white hair and a beard.
Karadzic -- one of the world's most wanted men for his alleged role in atrocities committed during the 1990s Balkans conflict -- was arrested in Belgrade after a weeks-long covert operation to track down the former leader, said proesecutor Vladimir Vukcevic.
At a news conference in Belgrade on Tuesday, authorities displayed a recent picture of Karadzic that showed him with short white hair, a long white beard and glasses. Before he went on the run, Karadzic was clean-shaven with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair.
Karadzic is accused of ordering the deadly siege of Sarajevo and some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II -- including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.
Serbian minister Rasim Ljajic told Tuesday's news conference that Karadzic, 63, was using false documents giving him the name of "Dragan Dabic" and a non-Serbian idenity at the time of arrest.
"It wasn't expected at all that this would ever happen to Radovan Karadzic -- that he would ever be caught in this way," said Ljajic, president of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.
A judge now has three days to prepare for his transfer to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague, and Karadzic has the right to appeal that transfer within those three days, Vukcevic added.
The capture of the so-called "Butcher of Bosnia" has been hailed as a landmark for international justice and for Serbia, whose new government has pledged to bring its wanted war criminals to justice as a condition of membership of the European Union.
"We understand that there is an absolute determination by the state to finish this job," prosecutor Vukcevic said.
Karadzic's arrest earlier drew jubilation in the streets of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, which Bosnian Serb forces had shelled heavily during the war, and a small protest from ultra Serb nationalists in front of Belgrade's heavily guarded war crimes court. 
His lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, has said there were concerns over Karadzic's arrest and treatment, accusing authoirities of violating the law by blindfolding him and holding him in a room. Watch Karadzic's lawyer slam arrest
He disputed official statements that Karadzic was captured on Monday, insisting his client was arrested Friday and held for three days before the announcement was made.
"Karadzic -- last seen in public in 1996 -- was the Bosnian Serb political leader during the 1992-1995 war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia.
Former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke blamed Karadzic for all the deaths in the three-year war in Bosnia, which had the bloodiest of the Balkan conflicts that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia.
"Without Radovan Karadzic, this thing wouldn't have happened," Holbrooke told CNN.
"This guy in my view was worse than Milosevic ... he was the intellectual leader," he said, referring to the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic who died in 2006 while on trial for war crimes in The Hague.
While president of the so-called Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Karadzic's troops were reported to have massacred hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats during a campaign of "ethnic cleansing."
Early estimates of the death toll from the 3-year war ranged up to 300,000, but recent research reduced that to about 100,000.
Vladimir Petrovic, the charge d'affairs at the Serbian Embassy in Washington, said the arrest showed his country's commitment to accounting for its past.
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"I think this is an example that the Serbian government is committed to all its international obligations and that it will continue cooperation with the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia," Petrovic said.
Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, congratulated Serbian authorities for taking Karadzic into custody and called it "an important day for the victims."
This news gives us immense satisfaction," EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana said, according to The Associated Press. "The new government in Belgrade stands for a new Serbia, for a new quality of relations with the EU."
Karadzic's arrest leaves former Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander, as the top-ranking war crimes suspect still at large.
"While this is an important milestone, the work of the International Tribunal will not be complete until all fugitives have been arrested and tried," a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said.
"Today, I can tell you that I feel kind of good," said Zlatko Lagumdzija, a former Bosnian prime minister wounded during the siege. He said the arrest could offer "a chance for new thinking" in Bosnia, still grappling with the scars of war.
Karadzic, a one-time psychiatrist and self-styled poet, declared himself president of a Bosnian Serb republic when Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia in 1992.
The Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav military and paramilitary forces, quickly seized control of most of the country and laid siege to Sarajevo, the capital.
During the conflict that followed, the Serb forces launched what they called the "ethnic cleansing" of the territories under their control -- the forced displacement and killings of Muslims and Croats. 
But he remained "kind of a Robin Hood" to Serbs during more than a decade as a fugitive, said Holbrooke, one of the architects of the Dayton Accords. 
Jubilation in Sarajevo upon news of arrest
SARAJEVO: Honking cars, singing crowds, overflowing bars: The streets of Sarajevo were jammed with euphoric crowds as Bosnian Muslims celebrated the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, Bosnia's most wanted war crimes suspect.
News of the arrest Monday evening of the former Bosnian Serb leader spread throughout the Bosnian capital within minutes - even before it was reported by the local media.
Residents poured into the streets singing, chanting, calling everyone they know. Many spilled out of bars in the city center in shock - overwhelmed at the news they had been waiting to hear for more than a decade.
Ignoring the pouring rain, young men ran down the main street waving Bosnian flags. Some dropped to their knees, slammed their palms against the ground and chanted, "This is Bosnia!" - in apparent retort to Karadzic's wartime attempts to annex the country to Serbia.
Karadzic faces 15 war crimes charges including genocide, murder and inhumane acts committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
"I still cannot believe it," said Zijah Sehic, 18, leaving one of the raucous crowds to go home and watch more news on television. "I can't wait to see him in the tribunal in a few days."
Bosnian TV carried reports from other mostly Muslim-dominated cities in Bosnia, where similar street celebrations were taking place.
In Kozarac, in northern Bosnia, the organizer of a rock concert interrupted the program to announce the news but received only laughter from the audience and thumbs-up for a good joke.
Only after enough mobile phones rang did the crowd begin to grasp what had happened, said Zinaida Mahmuljin, who was in the audience. Then the party really started, she said.
Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief who has also been indicted for war crimes, remains at large. The families of thousands of victims of the Srebrenica massacre, masterminded by Karadzic and Mladic and seen as Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, regard the arrest as a light at the end of the tunnel.
In Srebrenica, Munira Subasic, who lost two sons in the massacre welled up with emotion as she watched the news on television.
"After 13 years, we finally reached the moment of truth," Subasic said, adding: "I think this brings some settlement in our hearts and brings us forward to the future."
"I hope the tribunal will speed up the trial," said Sabaheta Fejzic, a Srebrenica survivor. "He deserves a lifetime in prison for the atrocities he committed with the help of Serbia and Montenegro."
Fejzic's baby son and husband were taken away from her when Bosnian Serb forces separated women from men and all boys older than 14 in the UN compound in Potocari near Srebrenica. She lost 16 relatives in the massacre.
"Those who had been harboring Karadzic all these years finally arrested him at the moment when the world is giving a green light to Serbia to join the EU," she said. "But the arrest of this butcher is good for both Bosnia and Serbia. Now there is a trace of hope that the same destiny awaits Ratko Mladic."
Despite the arrest of Karadzic, many said they were disillusioned with the West for its failure to arrest him for years.
"They could have arrested him any time they wanted," said a man who identified himself as Mevludin.
Bosnian Muslim politicians said the arrest should be used as an opportunity to get rid of his legacy.
"Karadzic and Mladic are not that important," said the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Zlatko Lagumdzija, a member of Bosnia's wartime presidency who was badly wounded in the war. "What is important is the project they personify."
The Bosnian president, Haris Silajdzic, welcomed the arrest but noted that Karadzic's legacy of ethnic cleansing had left scars that were still visible. More than 100,000 Bosnians are dead, and hundreds of thousands of those expelled in Karadzic's ethnic cleansing campaign have not returned to their homes.
Still, Silajdzic said the arrest would restore victims' trust in the justice system, a comment echoed by others.
"We have been waiting for 13 years, and we lost hope," said Kada Hotic, a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe after World War II. "Now we know - there is justice."
Yet in Bosnia, one group's villain is another group's hero.
Since the end of the war, the country has been divided into a republic run by Bosnia's Christian Orthodox Serbs and a federation between Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats.
Overnight reactions from Republika Srpska - a name Karadzic personally gave to the Serb republic - were rare. Officials did not make public comments and the streets were deserted.
Local TV showed a reporter stopping several cab drivers in the northern city of Banja Luka. Most said they had no comment on Karadzic's arrest, but one called it "a tragedy."
Bosnian Serbs have said they would secede if their republic's survival was threatened.
"Karadzic is not Republika Srpska and Republika Srpska has not been created by Radovan Karadzic," said the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik. "Republika Srpska was created based on a wish of the people."
BELGRADE–Radovan Karadzic's secret life included a mistress, a bogus family he claimed he left behind in the U.S., and frequent visits to a Belgrade pub called The Madhouse, acquaintances said yesterday.
With UN officials predicting Karadzic would be handed to the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the next week, a lawyer said the prisoner would handle his own defence, just like his former mentor, the late Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial.
Karadzic, 63, will do it looking like his old self, without the bushy white beard and long grey hair that hid his face when he was arrested by Serbian authorities, his lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, said. Karadzic asked for and got a shave and a haircut.
"He looks like new, exactly the same, only 14 years older," Vujacic said.
Since the arrest was announced Monday, Serbs have been intrigued by how Karadzic transformed himself from a flashy suit-and-tie politician into a long-haired health guru living openly in their midst while being sought for alleged crimes during Bosnia's 1992-95 ethnic bloodletting.
"His new life was fascinating. He hid in the open," said criminologist Leposava Kron.
Karadzic had a girlfriend named Mila whom he presented as an associate in his alternative medicine business, said Zoran Pavlovic, a software engineer who was hired to set up a website for the so-called Dr. Dragan Dabic to advertise his expertise in "human quantum energy."
Attempts to track down Mila for comment were unsuccessful yesterday. Karadzic remains officially married to Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic, who lives in their family house in the former Serb stronghold of Pale, in Bosnia, just east of Sarajevo.
Pavlovic said he visited Karadzic's apartment in New Belgrade and saw a framed photograph of four boys – all dressed in yellow L.A. Lakers T-shirts – who Karadzic said were grandsons living in America. But that was a lie.
The rented two-room flat was a mess, with things strewn about. Karadzic was always dressed in black and often complained that money was hard to come by, Pavlovic said.
"Frankly, he scared me a bit. I thought he belonged to some religious sect or something, with that beard and all, but I treated him as any other client," Pavlovic said.
Misko Kovijanic, who owns the Madhouse bar in the neighbourhood, said Karadzic was a regular who liked to sip red wine in the tavern, which is decorated with pictures of Karadzic and Bosnian Serb fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic during their wartime days.
The photographs, hanging above bottles of slivovitz plum brandy, show Mladic in combat fatigues and Karadzic, with his familiar salt-and-pepper mane, sporting a stylish suit.
Political analyst Miodrag Stojadinovic said the identity assumed by Karadzic surprised everyone because it was so far from any attempt to live in the shadows.
"He hid closest to his own profession," Stojadinovic said, referring to Karadzic's work as a psychiatrist in Sarajevo before the Bosnian war.
Some Serbs believe Serbian authorities long knew his whereabouts and chose to protect him.
"I can't believe he was like a needle in the haystack," said taxi driver Zoran Mirkovic. "There simply was no political will to get him until now."
His arrest came just two weeks after Serbian President Boris Tadic's pro-Western government assumed power and named a new security chief, replacing an aide to former nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica. Karadzic will be handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal sometime in the next week where he will be asked to enter pleas to the 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, officials said.
Vujacic, Karadzic's lawyer, said he intends to defend himself during his upcoming trial with the help of a team of legal advisers, just like Milosevic.
"He is telling me that he will prove his innocence by truth and that he is proud of what he had done and that he had been saving the Serb people from slaughter by Muslims and Croats," Vujacic said.
A proud Serb nationalist, Karadzic would be expected to portray his people as historic victims of their ethnic rivals. It is a line of defence that Milosevic regularly employed.
More than 100,000 people died during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, and 1.8 million others were driven from their homes.
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