Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Milosevic: Chi era veramente e come e' diventato il demonio

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAFC7.htm
After Milosevic
Why the international community turned the ineffectual, authoritarian
former president of Yugoslavia into evil personified.
by Philip Cunliffe
Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, was an
authoritarian ruler and a not insignificant player in the civil wars in
the Balkans in the 1990s. But how did he come to be seen as evil
personified, with his passing regretted because it has denied
international justice?
Milosevic died on 11 March in his prison cell at the United Nations war
crimes tribunal in The Hague (the International War Crimes Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia, or ICTY). His death came shortly after he was
refused permission to travel to Moscow for medical treatment, and only
months before his trial was due to end. Milosevic's life and political
career are now inseparable from the beleaguered and tortuous history of
the Tribunal itself. Already under the spotlight following the recent
suicide of another Serb imprisoned in The Hague, the tribunal is now
widely perceived to be in crisis, its procedures, care of prisoners and
even its purpose under scrutiny (1). Chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte
has been reduced to fending off rumours that Milosevic was poisoned
(2).
But the tribunal has been tottering for some time. Disoriented from the
very beginning by Milosevic's refusal to recognise the jurisdiction or
legitimacy of the court, the prosecution has failed to restore any
legal credibility to the proceedings. Many prosecution witnesses have
proved unreliable; the tribunal has consistently relied on the use of
hearsay evidence; the impartiality of the judges has been called into
question; the transparency and independence of the legal process has
been damaged by the US government censoring the testimony of chief
witnesses...the list goes on (3).
The legal shortcomings of the tribunal are hardly surprising when one
considers how it was formed by Western powers, and how it has been
subservient to their political needs. This is evident in the way the
prosecution has flouted Article 16 of the Tribunal Charter, which
stipulates that the prosecutor shall act independently without
instruction from any government. Yet Tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour
contributed to NATO's war effort against Yugoslavia in 1999, by issuing
indictments in the midst of the bombing campaign based on intelligence
data provided by NATO. She even allowed the former British foreign
secretary, the late Robin Cook, to announce his intention to punish
violations of international law at a jointly-held press conference (4).
For all this, liberal opinion-formers who talk about the 'legal limbo'
of Guantanamo have been silent about the legal shenanigans in The Hague
(5).
How did this court come about? Milosevic was extradited from Yugoslavia
on 28 June 2001, in defiance of the rulings of the Yugoslav
constitutional court, nine months after being ousted by an uprising
whose democratic credentials have since been called into question (6).
The Tribunal itself was established by the United Nations Security
Council in May 1993, on the initiative of the USA in the midst of the
war in Bosnia (1992-1995). Yet it was only six years later, during
NATO's 1999 war on Yugoslavia, that Milosevic was actually arraigned
for crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo. In late 2001, del
Ponte also brought charges of genocide against Milosevic in respect of
the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia, thereby violating a keystone of
customary extradition law - namely that you can only be tried for the
crime for which you were originally extradited.
Many commentators and international dignitaries have now observed that,
with Milosevic's death, it will be impossible legally to affirm his
guilt for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia, and indeed
even to entrench the idea that a genocide took place (7). Apart from
the fact that the prosecution itself publicly conceded some time ago
that it had failed to demonstrate Milosevic's complicity in genocide,
we should consider why so many people are willing to grant the final
word on what happened in the former Yugoslavia to these legal
proceedings (8). The belief in Milosevic's guilt has been implacable
throughout mainstream opinion, as is clear from the various obituaries
headlined 'The Butcher of Belgrade' (9). The conventional wisdom is
that he rose to power by inflaming the nationalism of the Serbian
masses, whose xenophobia repulsed the other republics comprising Tito's
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, prompting Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia and Macedonia to secede from the federation. Milosevic responded
by launching four Nazi-style wars of aggressive expansion and 'medieval
savagery', encompassing extermination, rape and ethnic cleansing, in
order to establish a 'Greater Serbia' on the ruins of former
Yugoslavia.
Yet there is a distinct tone of bad faith here. The conviction in
Milosevic's guilt as the 'Butcher of Belgrade' begs the question: why
do we need a legal process to prove what everyone apparently already
knows?
The dynamics of Yugoslav disintegration were set in motion, not by the
expansionist instincts of the Serbian masses, but by the Western
powers, who began competing with each other legally to recognise and
give support to one ethnic group against another in the early 1990s.
German and EU recognition of Croatia and Slovenia in 1991 was followed
by US recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. Granting diplomatic
recognition to secessionist groups arbitrarily elevated the wishes of
one group of Yugoslavs over those, including the large Serbian
minorities scattered throughout the former Yugoslavia, who wanted to
remain part of the federation. Thus the stage was set for
inter-communal conflict.
The bias against the Serbs encouraged the other ethnic groups to resist
a negotiated settlement, and to precipitate further outside
intervention on their behalf. Take the example of Bosnia, where the
European Community organised an independence vote in 1992, disregarding
the republic's constitution, which stipulated that such a vote could be
taken only upon agreement between Bosnia's three 'constituent peoples'
(Muslims, Croats and Serbs). The Bosnian Serbs boycotted the election,
and the consequent creation of an artificial state assured the outbreak
of war. This was clearly the result of decisions made by the Western
powers. Even Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the highly interventionist former
UN secretary-general, openly blames the competitive diplomacy between
the US and Europe for prolonging the bloodshed in Bosnia (10).
In addition, analysis of Milosevic's politics yields little evidence of
expansionist megalomania. For example, at the key stage of the
conflict, Milosevic, isolated and under pressure, was the one most keen
to reach a compromise - while the Bosnian Muslim government under Alija
Izetbegovic, emboldened by Western backing, broke off various deals.
Anyone who bothers to go through Milosevic's tedious speeches, often
cited as instrumental in stoking Serbian nationalism (12), will find
them littered with invocations of multi-ethnic harmony. Far from being
a messianic demagogue, he was a notoriously wooden orator, more at home
with backroom intrigue and opportunism than with mass politics. While
Milosevic's rule in Serbia was sometimes violent and often
authoritarian, he was democratically elected, with his powerbase
residing among pensioners, the poor working class and the peasantry,
who supported his half-hearted upkeep of old-style socialist economic
policies, and were stirred by his rhetoric of defending Tito's
Yugoslavia, by defending the interests of the Serbian minorities
outside Serbia.
The Western powers may not have been directly culpable for the majority
of the bloodshed in the Balkans, but they were politically responsible
for fomenting and entrenching divisions between ethnic groups - for
setting the process of civil war in motion and for prolonging it
through policies so meddlesome that they left even Boutros-Ghali
aghast.
For the West, Milosevic and the Serbs filled the role of the
aggressors, the convenient all-purpose scapegoats for the bloodshed.
While mainstream liberal opinion has finally conceded that the Serbs
were not the only ones to commit atrocities in the former Yugoslavia
(13), it cannot tear itself away from the understanding of the conflict
in terms of evil aggressors (the Serbs) versus innocent victims (the
Croats and Muslims, and later Kosovo Albanians) - a portrayal that does
not benefit any side in the conflict. The Albanians and Bosnian Muslims
are portrayed as pitiful creatures that need safeguarding in a
menagerie of international protectorates established over Bosnia and
Kosovo. The Serbs, on the other hand, can only be re-admitted to the
'international community' after the whole nation has collectively
grovelled at the feet of UN prosecutors.
This portrayal of the conflict reflects a new morally-charged
understanding of international affairs. When politics and conflict is
criminalised, then there must by definition be a criminal, a
pathological aggressor, and an innocent, a victim. This justice
dispensed by the Tribunal represents a new type of power in
international affairs, one that derives its authority from a
disembodied sphere of international human rights law, detached from any
political and national context, and exercised by a new, unelected caste
of judges, itinerant prosecutors and human rights lawyers, over the
heads of the representatives of sovereign states. Both politics and law
have suffered from this attempt to redefine the exercise of power.
For all the handwringing obituaries, the truth is that Milosevic was a
minor, relatively ineffectual figure in the history of Yugoslavia's
final days.
Philip Cunliffe studies international relations at King's College
London.

 final days.
Forse e' per questo, oltre che per la sua criminalita' 
politico-economica, che in Serbia gli si e' rifiutato i funerali di 
stato?
Am.

amalric ha scritto:



a Blair se dovesse crepare , visto la guerra criminale di cui è complice
con Bush, che faranno gli inglesi? funerale di stato?
-- 
 
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 con Bush, che faranno gli inglesi? funerale di stato?
Starai forse incominciando a soffire di Blairomania, oltre alle altre 
turbe della personalita'? Tsk, tsk...
Am.