BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: U.n. Still Looking For Serb Karadzic

(8/3/2002)CELEBICI (March 8) - NATO says he was here. But even though Radovan Karadzic is wanted for war crimes, villagers in his reputed hide-out say they will never betray the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, and their loyalty is helping him to thwart international efforts to bring him to trial. Forty miles east of Sarajevo, Celebici, a cluster of buildings perched on a wind-swept plateau, languished in obscurity until a few days ago. That's when black-masked NATO troops swept into the village, blowing down doors and lifting carpets in their search for Karadzic. The operation appeared to reflect fears that time is running out in the hunt for him and other top war crime suspects, including Ratko Mladic, his general. Since Europe's bloodiest post-World War II conflict ended in 1995, the number of NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia has dropped from 60,000 to 18,000, and further planned cuts may soon leave NATO too weak to fulfill its mandate by catching top fugitives. But closure on the Bosnian war is impossible as long as Karadzic and Mladic remain free. Jacques Klein, the U.S. official who heads Bosnia's international police, told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that the pair's arrest is crucial to the country's stability and the reconciliation of its Muslim, Croat and Serb communities. Failure to bring them to trial before the U.N. war crimes tribunal ``shows the impotence of the West in the face of evil,'' he said. NATO says it was acting on a tip in raiding Celebici. But Karadzic, indicted in 1995 for genocide and crimes against humanity, can count on a wellspring of backing that runs throughout the half of Bosnia inhabited by most of the country's 700,000 Serbs. ``I love him, and I wouldn't betray him,'' declared elementary teacher Rada Puhalac, assigned to the decaying Celebici schoolhouse searched by the NATO raiders Feb. 28. To the west in Pale, the highland town that served as Karadzic's capital during his siege of nearby Sarajevo, flower vendor Zorana Vuksanovic proclaims: ``God and the people are on his side.'' Even in Banja Luka, the down-at-the-heels power base of Bosnian Serbs most critical of Karadzic, many people say NATO should leave him alone. ``They'll never get him,'' says Aleksandra Stupar, a shop assistant in Banja Luka, reflecting a widespread belief that ``Raso'' is too foxy to be caught. The battle of wits feeds off a centuries-old conviction that whenever Serbs defend themselves, the outside world tars them as aggressors. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic used the myth of ``Serbs against the world'' to stoke the Balkan wars and now is exploiting it at his trial before the U.N. tribunal. Karadzic hammered at the same theme in launching the Bosnian conflict when the republic declared its independence from Yugoslavia, arguing that Serbs there were only defending themselves against the threat of Muslim and Croat massacres. The shaggy-haired 56-year-old Serb is a physician, psychiatrist, poet and author of children's books. But to the war crimes tribunal he is a key culprit in the atrocities of the Bosnian war, including the 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. In Celebici and beyond, however, his image is of a leader who saved the Serbs from destruction and who now makes fools of his pursuers. Fact and fiction are also hard to separate when it comes to where - and how - he hides. Normally reliable Serb sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say he travels only by night, mostly in remote edges of eastern Bosnia close to borders, allowing him to slip over to the Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro, his birthplace. The sources say wavy-haired lookalikes travel about to confound the searchers, while the real Karadzic is disguised and surrounded by an inner circle of well-armed bodyguards, as well as two outer layers of residents of whatever area he's in, who act as informants. ``We really think we were very close,'' said a senior NATO official, who demanded anonymity, describing the attempt to snatch Karadzic at Celebici. ``But he enjoys a very high level of support among the population over there and has a well-developed information network.'' That popularity is evident in the eastern part of the Bosnian Serb republic. ``We will defend our brother Radovan until death, until doomsday,'' proclaim freshly photocopied posters hastily pasted over U.S. State Department offers of a $5 million reward for his capture. Bosnian Serb television now refers to the indicted war criminal as ``our first president,'' and a newly launched Web site to promote ``the truth about Radovan Karadzic'' proclaims his innocence. A song often heard on Bosnian Serb radio urges Karadzic to ``come down from the mountains in your Mercedes'' and save his people.

//Shqiptarja.com

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