A Bosnian war crimes court indicted a former commander of the Bosnian Serb army for a 1995 missile strike that killed 71 people in the United Nations safe zone of Tuzla. It seems the commander, Novak Djukic, ordered a single artillery shell into western Tuzla hitting a group of boys , ranging from 3-years-old to 25-years-old , in the town's central square.
Frankly, this is getting a bit boring with these less-than-Srebrenica charges being announced here and there. What happened to Carla del Ponte's claim way back in June 2007, I think, that the big guys, Gen. Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, would be arrested in a “in a few weeks?” On Dec. 18, I reported that Raffi Gregorian, a U.S. administrator in Bosnia, said, “Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica can solve the issue of their arrest with just one phone call.” What happened with that, huh huh huh?
(Carla del Ponte is the chief prosecutor at the U.N. war crimes prosecutor and former lead prosecutor at International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.)
There was some hoo-ha earlier about an independent Kosovo emerging from that troubled mess, but it seems Russia and her friends put the ol’ kibosh on that one. Kosovo did say it would go it alone, but so far, I don't see anything like that developing. It's troubling that we’re still dealing with this crap and all these petty dudes keep getting charged. Now, don't get me wrong, it's part of the reconciliation process to bring these guys before the courts to answer for their crimes, but war crimes charges for a shelling? Hell, that puts that majority of the U.S. military in jeopardy of war crimes charges in Iraq if that's our threshold.
Everyone and their brother knows that Mladic and Karadzic are hiding out in Serbia somewhere, but the political will on part of the Serbians prevents them from emerging to face justice. Why the hell did we invade the region if there is no ultimate resolution to the conflict? NATO et al went in to put regional reconciliation into practice, but with superficial arrests and charges being announced while the real perpetrators are on the loose seems to reflect a lack of general development in that troubled region. Come on guys, hand over the big fish and lets get on with it.
