Long at best. In theory, the world community has plenty of prosecutorial tools to use in upholding the laws of war. And the end of the cold-war rivalry appears to be broadening the constituency for a muscular defense of human rights. But huge obstacles remain. As a practical matter documenting war crimes in the Balkans would be far more difficult than building a case against the Nazis was, because the Nazis kept good records and there was a clear chain of command. Then there is polities: many U.N. members fear that creating a tribunal to prosecute atrocities in the Balkans could lead to the investigation of human-rights abuses in their own countries. Some human-rights activists predict that the threat of prosecution will eventually be bargained away as part of a peace settlement in the Balkans. The United Nations, they charge, is merely posturing. “We are terribly frustrated,” one member of the U.N. commission told NEWSWEEK. “It’s a big game.”
The laws are clear enough. Any case against Milosevic or the others would rest on “grave breaches” of international agreements dating to 1907, when the Hague Convention prohibited attacks on undefended civilian targets. That basic principle was elaborated in the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949, which set up strict guidelines for the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians caught in war zones; among its many provisions are prohibitions on the transfer of civilian populations and “outrages against personal dignity.” In addition, a separate Genocide Convention, adopted in 1951, bans acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such” and requires the United Nations to take “appropriate” action to stop it. Reports on “ethnic cleansing” provide a powerful case that violations of all these conventions are rife.
But fully investigating a crime is far different from compiling allegations. And what the United Nations has created is the shell of an investigative force-without a staff, budget or any clear authority to do more than shuffle papers. “It’s a question of political will,” said one member. “I think they’re hoping that the crisis will go away.” Telford Taylor, one of the chief Nuremberg prosecutors, predicts that “the outcome will depend much more on political developments than on getting out the books on the laws of war.” Ultimately, what produced the Nuremberg judgment was an Allied victory in World War II: the victors set up their own tribunal. And in the Balkans, so far it’s the Serbs who are winning.
The Serbian president has armed and funded militias outside his republic
Leader of the Chetniks, a Serbian paramilitary organization
Heads the self-designated Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
