Since I live in Slovenia, the northernmost republic of the former Yugoslavia, I will discuss only the chase of the Yugoslav war criminals to which about 80 % of the book is devoted. The rest deals with Rwanda, where I did not watch the crimes as closely as those in my immediate vicinity.
By reading Carla Del Ponte's book one understands, why the former Yugoslavia went into pieces. The (Orthodox) Serbs and their "brothers" Montenegrins considered themselves as being a super-race, as the defendant Biljana Plavsic, attempted to imply as she explained to the Attorney General Del Ponte. According to their actions, it appears that the (Catholic) Croats meant to be just the same. The development of events had (as already many times previously) confirmed that it is impossible for two super-races to exist in a peaceful coexistence indefinitely. The Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo considered themselves being the "true believers" against the "nonbelievers", the Serbs, Montenegrins and Croats. The more remote (predominantly Catholic) Slovenes did not belong to any of these feuding groups, so we were the first ones to withdraw from the common State Yugoslavia, felt here more like a cage than as a homeland. As a result of the "ten-days-war" (in the summer 1991) when the so-called Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) attempted to impose the Serbian rule on Slovenia, the death toll in this struggle was "only" 39 JNA troops, 8 Slovenian troops and policemen, 5 civilians and 10 foreigners (journalists and truck drivers). The southernmost republic, Macedonia, withdrew from the Yugoslav turmoil in an even more fortunate way. As a result these republics were not the subject of the prosecution by the International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia (ICTFY).
Contrary to the Slovenian "trifle", the death toll in Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H), and Kosovo has exceeded many thousands; roughly two millions citizens of these republics and of the district Kosovo were forced to leave their homes and run for their lives. Alone in the vicinity of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, the Serbian military and paramilitary units systematically shot roughly 7000 civilians, mostly disarmed men, and boys. In these struggles, Serbia and Croatia attempted to take "their" part of B&H by force, horrible crimes, robberies, rapping and arsons were being committed. After three and half years, when on the 14th of December 1995, the Dayton Agreement was signed between Tudjman, Milosevic and the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, the hostilities ceased. But soon afterwards, the Serbs increased their ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, which was culminated in the first quarter of 1999. This aggression was stopped in the late spring the same year, after NATO planes bombed Serbia continuously for 74 days.
In order to punish this extensive ethnic cleansing and genocide, which happened in the middle of Europe of 20th century, the UN established the ICTFY in The Hague. Its task is to enforce the arrests and punish all those Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Bosnians and Kosovars, who committed crimes against humanity and war crimes. By pursuing these objectives, Del Ponte must visit the capitals of the former Yugoslav republics: Zagreb (Croatia), Belgrade (Serbia), Sarajevo (B&H), Pristina (Kosovo, then the district of Serbia), and Podgorica (Montenegro) to demand the charging documents and make the arrests of the culprits. The majority of these culprits include: The Croat President, Franjo Tudjman; his General, Ante Gotovina; the Bosnian Croat leader, Tihomir Blaksic; the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic; his General, Ratko Mladic; and the Bosnian Serbs' leader, Radovan Karadjic.
In her pursuit of the documents and culprits Del Ponte has collided with the "muro di gomma" (the rubber wall, which was the original title of her Italian manuscript) - many words and promises but few, if any deeds. Everybody was pointing to the others, who were doing them injustice, just to dilute the discussion and spend time. The opinions in the EU, UN, NATO, USA, and even at The Hague Tribunal proper were not always in favor of either of the immediate arrest of the culprits, or for a harder demand to get the relevant documents. Del Ponte describes numerous suggestions from the officials of these institutions - depending on the political climate in Russia, USA, Serbia, etc. It appears that the crimes suddenly became less important because of the immediate situations in Russia, the approaching elections in Serbia, as well as the attempts as to what the United States was just planning to do, etc... The worst examples were the Kosovars, who honor their medieval clan and tribal ties much more than the law and order of the western democracies.
In spite of these difficulties, Del Ponte may claim great success by bringing into custody the majority of the accused, even though the Serbian President, Milosevic, and the police and military leader of the Serbs in Croatia, Milan Babic, have committed suicide in the Scheveningen prison, and have avoided their verdict. (Milosevic did not take the prescribed drugs for his heart regularly, but kept accumulating them to be taken all at once, costing him his life). Two Croatian candidates for The Hague, the Defense Minister, Gojko Susak, and the President, Franjo Tudjman, died on cancer in May 1998 and December 1999 respectively, before enough evidence for their arrest has been collected; while the much sought General Ante Gotovina, eventually found his place in the Scheveningen custody. Until the end of March, 2009 (when these lines were written) the Serbian "capo dei capi", General Ratko Mladic has still "not been found", because most Serbs keep protecting their "hero", no matter what the cost. On the other hand, their leader in Bosnia, Radovan Karadjic has been arrested and sent to The Hague, after Del Ponte has completed her book.
The entire book reads like a thriller, for Del Ponte is an excellent narrator. In one part she writes of a movie, which has been shown on the court as the evidence against Milosevic, who claimed the infamous Serbian paramilitary unit, "Red Berets" had nothing in common with the massacres in Bosnia. In the first part the movie shows the aging Serbian Patriarch, Pavle, blessing this unit and their flag. In the second part, it shows four boys of Srebrenica descended from a truck, being forced to go to the edge of the mass grave, to be shot in head by the same "Red Berets". Heartbreaking evidence was narrated by a truck driver, who described how from a mass grave of the people just shot (near Srebrenica), a boy of about four years old emerged from the pile of dead, approaching the executioners. Since they had lowered their machine guns, the commander urged them to "finish" the child. However, they refused, claiming that the commander has his pistol too, so he should shoot the boy. Then the commander ordered that the child should be sent back by the truck to be "finished" with the next batch of people to come. Since the panic-stricken boy resisted entering the truck, the driver has switched on the light and radio in the cabin and in a friendly manner invited the child to come there. Eventually the child responded to this only kind soul, in that orgy of cruelty, by entering the truck's cab. He has laid his little hand into driver's palm, addressing him as "baabo" (daddy)... Despite the copious evidence of such kind and "...Away from the killing fields, many Serbs were dumbfounded at how the entire world seemed to have turned against them. Sadly, some of them, and even some of their leaders, are still lost in a miasma of self pity...(page 37)".
One outstanding feature of this book is also the correct spelling of ALL Yugoslav names, which I can not afford to type correctly on my computer keyboard (where I have the correct fonts), because of the unusual and meaningless fonts, instead of the correct ones, would appear in the amazon.com review. It seems that Times New Roman Central
Europe fonts are very unusual on the other side of the Atlantic - except for the Other Press, New York, where this book has been published.
P.S. On the page 4, Del Ponte mentions also"...the officers who ordered the deaths of those thousands of forcibly repatriated Yugoslav prisoners in 1945..." Just recently one of the nearly 600 so far discovered mass graves of those, mostly innocent people, who were killed by the Yugoslav communist troops after WWII, has been opened in the abandoned mine "Barbarin Rov" at Lasko, Slovenia. The estimated total of these victims in Slovenia is 100,000 minimum to 200,000 maximum, thus being comparable to all those killed in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo when Yugoslavia felt apart. Tragically these, so far unpunished terrible crimes against humanity by some bastards, are not on the agenda of ICTFY!
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