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Slobodan Milosevic is characterized
in the obituaries as the "Butcher of the Balkans."
If that is the story you want to read about, please go to almost
any other media outlet and read it again and again. Some are
now suggesting that death is Milosevic's final revenge, that
he "ended up cheating history" by dying before judgment
was passed. But the world has already passed judgment on Milosevic
and what is being cheated by his death is history itself.
What the corporate media overwhelmingly
ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life
as well--his intimate knowledge of US war crimes in Yugoslavia.
While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to
be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique
position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of
the US role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the
1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do
at his war crimes trial when he died.
Because of the rule of victors'
justice in the ad hoc tribunal system (a poor and unfair substitute
for a true international court), Milosevic's case would have
been the only international trial to potentially expose the details
of the illegal, US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days
in 1999. While the US-backed court consistently tried to limit
Milosevic's right to speak, stripping him of his right to self-representation,
Milosevic battled regularly to raise US war crimes. Sadly, with
Milosevic will likely die the last hope the victims of these
crimes in Yugoslavia had of getting their day (if it could even
be called that) in court--a tragic and unjust reality to begin
with--that speaks volumes about the twisted state of international
justice.
Milosevic's cause, regardless
of what one thinks of it, was a casualty of 9/11--an event that
relegated him and his trial to the annals of history before it
was even over. Most people in the world--with the exception of
those in the Balkans where the proceedings were broadcast live,
daily--probably didn't even know Milosevic was still on trial
in the Hague. It became an obscure sideshow to the blood and
gore unfolding constantly on the international stage.
Milosevic's death means that
those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning 7 years ago
this month, killing thousands, will be, once and for all protected
from any public scrutiny for their crimes. However opportunistic
Milosevic may have been, he would have been one of the few people
to appear at the Hague that could have--and would have--laid
out these crimes in great detail. Now, there is almost certain
to be no condemnation of the US bombing of Radio Television Serbia,
killing 16 media workers, the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace,
shredding human beings into meat, the use of depleted uranium
munitions and the targeting of petrochemical plants causing toxic
and chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. There will
be no condemnation of the bombing of Albanian refugees by the
US or the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train
or the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Milosevic
also would have discussed how the US supports a regime in Kosovo
that has systematically expelled Serbs, Romas and other ethnic
minorities from their homes and burnt down scores of churches.
He would have discussed the role of the US in funding and arming
the Kosovo Liberation Army, which operates like a death squad
and how the new prime minister of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, is a US-trained
war criminal who gained infamy in both the Bosnian war and the
1999 Kosovo conflict. And Milosevic would have talked of the
US interference in the Yugoslav elections in 2000 and the ultimate
neoliberal takeover that was the aim of Clinton's sanctions and
78 days of bombing. In reality, it would have fallen on deaf
ears, but it would have been stated for the record.
It is ironic that Milosevic's
last legal battle was an attempt to compel his old friend turned
nemesis Bill Clinton to testify at his trial. If successful,
Milosevic would have grilled the man who was US president through
the entire Yugoslav war in what would have been a fiery direct
examination. Clinton and Milosevic were once pals who talked
collective strategy in the 1990s. Milosevic had many damning
stories to tell and, without a doubt, uncomfortable questions
to ask Clinton. The judges in Milosevic's case clearly worked
to keep those moments from ever happening and the US government
made clear its forceful opposition to such subpoenas of US officials,
even considering invading a country that would put a US official
on trial. With or without Clinton, Milosevic's defense would
have brought to light some serious documentation of US war crimes
and he died, muzzled, before he really got started.
Little attention, therefore,
has been paid to Milosevic's long-term efforts--which predated
9/11, the 1999 NATO bombing and his own trial--to expose the
presence of al Qaeda in the Balkans--from Bosnia to Kosovo. With
9/11, Milosevic's talk of al Qaeda was easily dismissed as laughable,
pathetic opportunism. But those who followed Milosevic's career
and more importantly the events of the 1990s in Yugoslavia know
it was none of those. Those allegations were based on true events
the US does not want discussed in an international court. Following
the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, many Mujahadeen
eventually turned their sights on Yugoslavia where they went
to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims against the Orthodox Serbs
and Catholic Croats. Once again, the US and bin Laden were on
the same team. To this day there are reports of training camps
in Bosnia, which remains under occupation. It is also a likely
training ground for future blowback.
In his opening statement, Milosevic
alluded to some of the information he would introduce during
his defense. "In 1998 when [Clinton envoy Richard] Holbrooke
visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at
our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided
by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing
the members of this terrorist organisation in Albania. However,
they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore,
with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war." Milosevic
concluded that "one day all this will have to come to light,
these links."
That, however, is unlikely
and more so now that Milosevic is dead.
To be sure, there will never
be indictments of these US war criminals at the Hague: Bill Clinton,
Madeline Albright, Jamie Rubin, William Cohen, Sandy Berger,
Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark. For many of Serbia's victims
of US war crimes, Milosevic's trial was a "Hail Mary"
pass, as awful of an historical irony as that is, aimed at someone
recognizing their forgotten suffering.
It is a sad testimony to the
state of international jurisprudence that after many attempts
to find justice, the only hope for US victims in the Yugoslavia
wars was the trial defense of a man many of those same victims
despised. If there was an independent international court that
was recognized and respected by the US, those responsible for
bombing Yugoslavia would have been alongside Slobodan Milosevic
in the docks these past years instead of having their responsibility
being buried with him.
Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist who spent
extensive time reporting from Yugoslavia, including covering
the 1999 US-led NATO bombing from the ground. The night Milosevic
was arrested in Belgrade, Scahill was beaten by the former president's
supporters outside Milosevic's residence. He has also reported
from Milosevic's trial in the Hague. Scahill is currently a Puffin
Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. He can be reached at
jeremy(at)democracynow.org
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