The tension between recognising and relativising war crimes

Three coinciding events - Radovan Karadzic's opening statement before the international tribunal, the arrest of Ejup Ganic in London and Bernard Kouchner's mocking remarks to a journalist's question regarding human organ trafficking allegations in Kosovo - have once again illustrated the persistent tensions between the need to recognise all crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, on the one hand, and perceptions of crimes being relativised, on the other.

Neither theory nor practice provides a clear-cut solution for overcoming such dilemmas, but conflict transformation requires that the collectivisation of guilt be diluted in order to vanquish inter-ethnic paralysis and prevent individual victims from being denied justice purely because of their ethno-national identity.

Ganic, a war-time member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was arrested on an extradition warrant from Serbia for alleged war crimes relating to the murder of 42 soldiers during an attack on a UN-led convoy containing a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) column withdrawing from Sarajevo. Ganic's detention has sparked a furious response from various quarters.

Haris Silajdzic, the Bosniak member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, was quick to remark that "this is not the first attempt to relativise and set equal blame", while Christian Schwarz-Schilling, a former high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, described the move as "an attempt to manipulate history ... [that] also reflects Serbia's continuous attempt to avert the blame for atrocities committed during the war and allocate some of the responsibility to other former Yugoslav republics".

Such statements essentially argue that to seek recognition for crimes committed against one party to the conflict in some way serves to relativise those crimes perpetuated by that very same party. The commonly employed dichotomies of war - of "defenders" versus "aggressors", of forces of "good" versus those of "evil" - are, however, always far too simplistic to capture and comprehend the inherent complexities, particularly of a civil war such as that fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Overcoming these dichotomies requires that individual crimes and individual victims be recognised regardless of their ethno-national identity. The failure to do so only serves to reinforce the collectivisation of guilt and the perpetuation of divisions on ethnic lines. The potential costs of "dragging up the past" by no means outweigh the benefits to post-conflict societies of compelling all parties to explore their respective historical roles and responsibilities - not only during the early 1990s, but deeper into the past - in order to challenge the forces of historical revisionism.

The same point also applies to members of the international community, whose involvement in the Balkans has not been without consequence. During a recent visit to the Serb enclave of Gracanica, Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister and former head of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, responded to a question about human organ trafficking - allegations that first surfaced in a book by Carla Del Ponte, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia's former chief prosecutor, and which are currently being investigated by the Council of Europe - with a heated diatribe, insisting that "there was no yellow house, there was no organ trade. People who talk about things like that are bums and murderers".

Kouchner's crass remarks are those of a man who believes himself to be simultaneously judge, jury and executioner, not those of a man who should be re-emphasising the need for a full and transparent investigation into the claims.

By individualising responsibility and punishment for war crimes, the international tribunal was intended to facilitate conflict transformation by preventing the collectivisation of guilt. As is often the case in the Balkans, however, practice has fallen short of intention; justice has not remained blind, particularly to ethno-national identities, and many individual victims have become invisible. Only through the mutual recognition of each and every victim of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, regardless of their identity, can the foundations be laid to help transcend and transform hardening inter-ethnic divisions.

The persistent tension between recognition and relativisation - as highlighted by the Ganic case - demonstrates the challenges faced by those working to ensure that all crimes and victims are treated equally.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/war-crimes-must-not-relativised