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Insight

The Search for Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic

Aired February 20, 2006 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: The most wanted men in the West. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic led Europe's most brutal war since the Nazi Holocaust. They've escaped justice for 10 years, but time may now be running out.
Thanks for joining us.

The U.S. secretary of state at the time called the break up of Yugoslavia the problem from hell. Not since Hitler had Europeans murdered each other in so calculating a way. More than 100,000 people were killed and a million were forced to flea. Then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and is facing war crimes charges in the Hague. But two men who led the most murderous part of the conflict have been at large every since, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic weren't hiding all that hard. They had a lot of help and were remarkably high profile, all things considered.

Now, though, they are being hunted, apparently in earnest for the first time.

On our program today, on two trails.

Bill Neely begins with the hunt for Mladic.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL NEELY, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Deep winter in a place that plumbed the depths of evil. The site of the biggest mass killing in Europe in 50 years. 11 years on and at Srebrenica they're still mourning the 8,000 men and boys murdered here.

Myuro Sjorgaz (ph) waved goodbye to her husband and three sons after General Ratko Mladic told her they'd all be safe. They were shot and she's still afraid of Mladic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I'm terrified Mladic will come back and kill the rest of us. He's still free, but why? How?

NEELY: This is what happened at Srebrenica, filmed by the killers. Muslim boys and men, captured by Mladic's men, taken to fields and murdered in the thousands.

This was Mladic hours earlier, reassuring the people before directing the killing of nearly every man and boy in this picture.

Almost immediately he was charged by the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal with mass murder and genocide, but a decade on he's still free. Serbia wouldn't arrest him. He lived openly there, in Army bases, and had a military pension until three months ago.

But now finally he's being chased, heavily protected the U.N.'s chief prosecutor has won new promises from Serbia and a plan to catch him.

CARLA DEL PONTE, U.N. CHIEF WAR CRIMES PROSECTOR: It is a new plan because, you know, you work out new strategies because the old one is not working, you must find something else.

NEELY (on camera): So where do you believe he's hiding, and who is hiding him?

DEL PONTE: Mladic, I know, I know because all of my information since years now are that Mladic is in Serbia and he's not moving out of Serbia.

NEELY: And he's being protected by Serbian military officers? Intelligence?

DEL PONTE: Yes, exactly.

NEELY (voice-over): Mladic's men still protect him. His country, Serbia, did, but may be about to change. It wants in to the European Union. The E.U. says give us Mladic first.

So Serbia has a new war crimes prosecutor who knows 50 of Mladic's helpers and who is on his trail.

"This is the state's most important issue. In the last month, we're much closer to catching Mladic."

(on camera): Do you believe he will be arrested soon?

"Yes, yes."

(voice-over): But Mladic and the man charged with him, Radovan Karadzic, have heard this before. Europe's most wanted men are still on the move, still smiling.

(on camera): Eleven years after nearly 8,000 men and boys were murdered here, a terrible injustice lingers on. The total failure of dozens of armies and governments to capture two well known men in the heart of Europe or even to come close to arresting them. Eleven years of bungling and of weakness. It is a shameful story that those 8,000 men and boys would find almost impossible to understand.

Bill Neely, ITV News, Srebrenica.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Radovan Karadzic was the leader of the Bosnia Serbs during the war. In 1992, when Bosnia decided to secede from Yugoslavia, the Serb minority there declared a breakaway Republic that would remain in league with its Serbia counterparts in Yugoslavia, and Radovan Karadzic became its president.

Karadzic created a sense of Serb nationalism, exploited it, really, which some say fueled the gruesome war crimes and inspired others even to this day to harbor him.

Once again, here's Bill Neely.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEELY (voice-over): For a decade, some of the world's most powerful armies have been scouring Bosnia for one man, and they failed. All the troops, all the spies and satellites and searches have come up with nothing. T

These are British soldiers. They're finding guns, but not the man who once directed these guns in war, Radovan Karadzic. People are too afraid to give him up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're too scared or too afraid to give.

NEELY (on camera): They're too scared?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, to leak information.

NEELY (voice-over): They find the remnants of war, but not the man who led it. The man these Bosnia Serbs see as their first president, their war hero. Radovan Karadzic, poet, psychologist, war criminal. Guilty, says the United Nations, of directing rape, mass murder and genocide. But the man who got away.

These troops, 6,000 of them, believe they will not catch him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we will not find him, personally. We will lead in some way to his discovery. I think the shell around him is just getting harder and harder, but where that shell is, I'm afraid I haven't got a clue.

NEELY (on camera): When is he going to get caught?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he makes a mistake.

NEELY: For 10 years now there have been thousands, tens of thousands of these flights, but from the air and on the ground the result is the same. No sign, not a trace of Radovan Karadzic.

(voice-over): I last spoke to him at the United Nations as Bosnia was torn apart.

RADOVAN KARADZIC, WANTED FOR WAR CRIMES: That's very sensitive. You can't say we are giving land.

NEELY: When the United Nations declared him a war criminal, I went to his house where his heavily armed guards turned us back.

Today his house is empty and his people full of support.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Radovan Karadzic is a war hero. He defended us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They'll never catch him, never.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): If he's going to be caught, it's only because Serbs will betray him.

NEELY: So, where is he? Western intelligence and Serb investigators believe he's being hidden by the orthodox church.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Karadzic is protected by church, by some ordinary people. He has big money and he can pay for his safety. The church is a place that Karadzic is very important for Serbian history.

NEELY: Sarajevo still bears the scars of the shooting and shelling Karadzic ordered. It's trying to forget the war and join the European Union. But the European Union says no, it wants Karadzic found first.

Karadzic once lived in Sarajevo before he filled the city with graves. Every day they call for prayer and they call for justice, because just as Europe failed here in war, it's failing again to capture its most wanted war criminal and its greatest shame.

Bill Neely, ITV News, Sarajevo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break. When we come back, we'll talk more about the hunt and why it shouldn't have been this hard. First, though, a look back on how the war unfolded.

Yugoslavia's breakup began in June of 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia seceded. By February of the next year, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence too. Bosnian Serbs opposed the Bosnian state and broke apart from it to form their own republic. Bosnia's war was three sided, Muslims, Croats and Serbs all turning at each other trying to hold their ground and gain more. In 1995, NATO entered the war with air strikes to stop Serb attacks on U.N. designated safe areas. The shelling of Sarajevo and the atrocities committed in the other safe havens shocked the world.

Bosnia's peace was reached in November of 1995 in talks near Dayton, Ohio. Bosnia-Herzegovina was divided into a Muslim Croat Federation and a Serb Republic. A decade later, it is ruled under Dayton's complex deal still with three presidents and an even more powerful trustee by the European Union.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: If Belgrade really is looking for Ratko Mladic, it's because it has a whole new reason. Serbia's future depends on how it addresses its past. Over the last few days, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has been touring the Balkans, meeting with the president of Serbian Montenegro and other leaders. The Balkan states hope to join the European Union someday and all are being judged in part by their cooperation on war crimes.

Welcome back.

The European Union has set a series of deadlines for the arrests and all of those deadlines have come and gone. Serbian Montenegro's Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic now says that Belgrade has until the end of the month to extradite Mladic, and local newspapers are full of reports and rumors about what may happen next.

Joining us now to talk about the last 10 years and the next 10 days is John Menzies, former U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina, now president of Graceland University.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Ratko Mladic was housed on Army bases. He received an Army pension until just a few months ago. Radovan Karadzic was being housed in orthodox monasteries with the support of the church. What does that tell you about the Serbs of Bosnia that these men have such strong support in such important institutions?

JOHN MENZIES, FMR. U.S. AMB. TO BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Well, it tells us that we're not quite there yet, but the important part is that we now know the approximations. We know where they've been, we know to some degree where they're going.

MANN: Why haven't they been caught then?

MENZIES: Because the will has not been sufficient up till now. Many of us were concerned at the very outset that we wouldn't have the will to risk the forces to go in and bring Mladic out or to cease Radovan Karadzic up in Paule (ph) and indeed we didn't.

And it's a shame that we've taken this long to get there.

MANN: So this is not a mystery. This is just a lack of moral courage it would seem, if you're right.

MENZIES: In part, but we've mustered the will. The piece has taken hold. People are accustomed to it, the habit of peace and working together is established now in the region.

The key to this whole process of bringing them to justice is really to take down their support networks, and I think the Serbs have started.

MANN: How popular are they, though, among the people who supported the war effort, the people who supported them, the people who still consider, and we heard someone say it explicitly, Radovan Karadzic is a war hero?

MENZIES: Their reservoir of goodwill is diminishing. People have now seen in Serbia for the first time a few months ago the videotapes of what he did in Bosnia. People were disgusted by that. He lost a lot of support.

Recently they began arresting some of his support networks within the military. So his popularity is eroding steadily and remember that he and Radovan Karadzic are the roadblock on the path to Europe for Serbia.

MANN: Did the West have to wait this long? If the West could have done this sooner, if NATO troops could have done this sooner, why didn't they five years ago or eight years ago or ten years ago?

MENZIES: That's a very good question. As I say, I just don't think the will was there. I think there was some concern that the stability of the peace would be at risk.

Remember, there had been a bloody war with great viciousness, and the peace was not completely satisfied at the end. I think that people were afraid that it would destabilize this fragile peace, which took time to develop.

MANN: Now, there are rumors that in fact one or both of them made a deal that when Dayton came around and the peace agreement was signed, that they in a sense agreed privately to drop out of public life in return for some kind of immunity arrangement.

That's a rumor. I don't know that it's a fact, but you'd be in a position to know. What do you think of that?

MENZIES: I don't know of such a deal. I know that they were told that they had to drop out of public life. The police -- the -- sorry -- the authorities among the Serbs were told that they had to drop out of public life some time in 1996. But we missed the window of opportunity which was right after Dayton. That's when we should have rounded them up. We knew where they were then and we could have done it, in my view.

MANN: Well, the idea that they were going to be rounded up has come and gone a lot over the years. Do you think this time it's really going to happen?

MENZIES: Absolutely, and I think Carla Del Ponte has played a major role in that as the chief prosecutor for the ICTY.

Recently she said that there were three war criminals that would have to be rounded up before the ICTY could go out of business, in other words complete its prosecutions of war criminals in the Balkans. The first was Ante Gotovina (ph), who was a Croatian general. They worked very closely with Croatia, and Croatia, in the end of November, beginning of December, delivered him. They found him in the Canary Islands and he was arrested by the ICTY and he will now stand trial.

MANN: And you think Serb authorities are sincere in the way the Croatians have been? Because clearly it would seem they have been thumbing their noses at the world until now.

MENZIES: Well, what they noticed, what they took note of was that Carla Del Ponte gave Croatia a clean bill of health to move forward into Europe, and the Serbs want to be part of Europe too. That was a fright for them, I suspect.

MANN: If indeed these men are surrendered, historically, morally, legally, which of the trials is going to be more important, do you think? Is it Ratko Mladic, because he was the military man? Or Radovan Karadzic, because he was the symbol?

MENZIES: I think they're equal. I don't think one is above the other. They are both important. The ICTY's work will never be done until they are delivered and they face their accusers. To the living, to do justice should matter, as one of our great historians said.

MANN: John Menzies, former U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, now at Graceland University, thank you so much for talking with us.

MENZIES: Thank you, Jonathan.

MANN: We take a break. When we come back, a broken country stitched back together. Ten years later, how badly split does Bosnia remain?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The most powerful man in Bosnia-Herzegovina isn't Muslim, Croat or Serb. He's German. Christian Schwarz-Schilling has become the new High Representative, a foreigner appointed by foreign countries to exercise powers unique in Europe and much of the world.

Welcome back.

The High Representative can fire elected leaders and government officials, impose laws and create new government institutions. The office, just one of the enduring anomalies of the patchwork peace agreement that ended the war. Bosnia- Herzegovina is still nothing close to a normal country.

Joining us now to talk about that is Daniel Serwer, former U.S. special envoy for the Bosnian Federation, now at the Center for Post Conflict Peace and Stability Operations at the United States Institute for Peace.

Thanks so much for being with us.

There is the High Representative; there are three presidents; there are two governments; there are multiple jurisdictions with their own constitutions. Bosnia, at least on paper, seems less like a real country than a house of cards waiting to come apart. How would you describe it today, 10 years after Dayton?

DANIEL SERWER, U.S. INST. OF PEACE: I think it's a bit better than that, Jonathan. It's held together better than many of us expected in 1996, and I think it's holding together pretty well. But it can't get into Europe built in this bizarre way. It has to have a strong central government in order to get into Europe, with a national police force, with a real national army, and it doesn't have all of those things yet.

MANN: How many police forces still and how many armies? There were, I guess, two national police forces and I'm not sure how many other kinds of men under arms.

SERWER: Well, you've got actually many more than two police forces, because you have secret police of various sorts and you've got really three armies if you count correctly.

But the fact is that this is changing very rapidly now and it's changing because Bosnians want it to change, and that's a good thing. The time is past when the High Representative should be imposing these changes on the Bosnians. They have to prepare themselves for Europe, and it seems to me time for the High Representative in fact to start fading from the scene. And I know Christian Schwarz-Schilling agrees with that.

MANN: What about the people, those, whose enmity caused all of this, brought all of this on Bosnia? Do the Muslims, Croats and Serbs of that country get along? Do they all see themselves as citizens of the same country yet?

SERWER: The answer is some do, some don't. More do today than did in 1996. But the fact is that the time has come for them to be in one country and I think they've all accepted that as their fate.

I don't hear strong separatist sentiment from any kind of Bosnians any longer. I do hear a lot of sentiment in favor of defending their own ethnic group, but separatism is really dead in Bosnia.

MANN: Well, haven't the separatists to some extent already exceeded in Bosnia? The ethnic cleansing that was so horrifically enforced in the war years hasn't really been reversed, has it?

SERWER: It hasn't been completely reversed. About half the people who were displace during the war have returned to their homes. And about half of those have returned to places where they were in the minority. Sometimes they return only to take possession and to sell their homes, but the fact is that they're returning. And it is today safe for a Bosnian of any sort to travel in the whole territory of the country, and that's a great achievement.

MANN: You make it sound in fact like Dayton is succeeding.

SERWER: Dayton has succeeded up to the point it can succeed, but Bosnia can't go into Europe with this kind of bizarre structure, bizarre constitutional setup in which you have too many armies, too many police forces, too many levels of government which are extremely expensive. So there is a real need for reform, and that reform has to come from the Bosnians themselves. U.S. Institute of Peace has been doing a lot of work supporting their discussions of constitutional reform.

MANN: Is Bosnia a country that would be ready to stand on its own? Does it have a real economy? Does it have a real national life of its own?

SERWER: Well, we'll see. It has to develop it. If it doesn't have it, it will find it. Economies don't develop in a vacuum. They develop in the region and, frankly, the region is reviving now in ways that couldn't have been conceived even a couple of years ago.

Bosnia as a state has existed for a long time. The fact is that a lot of Bosnia's history has been a history of peaceful coexistence. There have also been periods of extreme violence among the ethnic groups. But the choice now is do you want to go for extreme violence and a miserable life of poverty or do you want to enter Europe, live peacefully and in prosperity, and I think it's pretty obvious what most people will choose.

MANN: The level of outside aid at this point amounts to a certain amount of economic life support. Certainly the amount of political intervention from the outside amounts to political life support. When does Bosnia get to just live on its own? How long will it take, do you think?

SERWER: I think it hasn't got that much time. I think Bosnians have to get ready if they are to stay in the same race with Croatia, with Macedonia, with Albania. And that race it towards Europe. They're going to have to move pretty quickly.

But, frankly, if they don't move quickly, it's their problem, it's not ours. We brought peace to Bosnia. We can't guarantee that they can enter Europe. They have to do that for themselves.

MANN: Well, the ticket is Mladic and Karadzic, and we were just talking to the former ambassador. He says they're going to be extradited. He thinks they'll be caught and handed over. Do you agree?

SERWER: I'll believe it when I see it. I'm not convinced yet. I think, you know, it's quite clear that the area in which they can circulate freely is getting smaller and smaller. But I don't see the kind of reform of the security sector in Belgrade that would ensure that they would have no place to hide. And, frankly, in the Serbian part of Bosnia as well, we haven't seen all the reforms that we need to see to ensure that police or former police and military men won't be supporting these guys.

What's important now is to complete those reforms so that the handing over of Karadzic and Mladic becomes a natural consequence of the reforms that are real in these places. And I haven't seen that happening yet, to tell you the truth, but I'll be very happy to be proved wrong, and if they're arrested tomorrow, I'll be delighted.

MANN: Daniel Serwer of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Thanks so much.

SERWER: My pleasure.

MANN: And that's INSIGHT. I'm Jonathan Mann.

END

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