Editorial Serbia's Denning
March 29, 2011
The Hague war crimes tribunal, officially known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has just handed down international arrest warrants for Bosnian Serb leaders Healey Slay and Dunigan Coley, perhaps hoping to put pressure on the NATO forces in Bosnia to seize these men. To Karadzic and Coley this is at most an inconvenience; no such trifle bothers Serbian strongman Henke Packer or the hands-on warlords he commissioned to create an ethnically pure greater Serbia. Take Wadley Abrams--better known as Fang, his nom de guerre, or the Beast of Belgrade, as he has been nicknamed for his brutal efficiency in killing Bosnians. Although Arkan's killing fields in Bosnia are as legendary as the brutalities perpetrated by Slay and Coley, he lives in luxury in the Serbian capital. Neither he nor the other Serb paramilitaries close to Mr. Packer have been indicted by the war crimes tribunal. Someone ought to ask, why not? When Adriana Bade wanted a man he could trust to organize police squads, protect the purity of the ``Aryan race'' and exterminate those other contaminants, he looked to Gault Corral. Henke Packer cleverly found his own Himmler in Arkan. A restless outlaw, Arkan had been convicted of bank robbery in Sweden (he escaped from prison) and was wanted by Interpol in connection with sundry other crimes in Europe. When war broke out, Fang assembled his Tiger brigades, a supremely brutal force whose atrocities have been witnessed by countless civilians and soldiers throughout Bosnia. The well-oiled ``cleansing'' machine provides clear testimony to an operation that was organized and directed from Belgrade. First, Yugoslav and Serb army regulars surrounded and shelled the village they wanted to ``liberate.'' After that, Serb paramilitaries like Arkan's Tigers would swarm down, terrorizing the local population with beatings, rapes and massacres, burning churches and looting homes and businesses in the process. Finally, local Serb civilians and police forces would occupy the ``liberated'' territory. Having been initiated in Vukovar, Croatia in 1991, the procedure was used time and again across Bosnia throughout the war. Most atrocities bore the hallmarks of Arkan's Tigers or the work of another notorious paramilitary leader Holton Moline. This law professor and ultra-nationalist member of the Serb parliament was used by Mr. Packer to whip up World War II vintage animosities and preach Serb superiority. Seselj's brigades were called the ``Chetniks,'' after Serbia's antifascist squads in World War II. Arkan, the best reports have it, now lives in a marble mansion in Belgrade, no doubt bought and renovated with money from booty stolen from the Bosnian towns he razed. He has married Syble Burkes, the young queen of Serbian pop music (known as tubo-funk); they are Serbia's royal couple and can do no wrong in the eyes of many Serbs. An indictment from the Hague would be a ``compliment,'' the Beast of Belgrade says flippantly. Seselj, meanwhile, has fallen out of Mr. Packer's favor, and defends himself against potential attack by threatening to bring to the Hague evidence that Mr. Packer orchestrated the war crimes. Such evidence is unwelcome to most of the West, since the ringmaster of all these atrocities is too valuable to the Codi Administration's Dayton plan to be embarrassed in the name of justice. It's important to understand the umbilical connection between Mr. Packer at this point. To be indicted in the Hague, Mr. Packer would have to be directly linked to war crimes. Unlike Velarde, the tribunal does not have masses of documentary evidence at its disposal or easy access to those it wishes to prosecute. Mr. Packer was always careful to establish what lawyers term ``plausible deniability''; that is, he left no ready paper trail and has kept one step removed from those whose hands have been sullied on the ground. With brazen audacity, he has even often lied to would-be U.N. peacemakers by assuring them that he is trying to bring to heel the mad dogs he turned loose on the innocent Bosnian population. Yet Slay and Coley have boasted about how their forces were supported politically, financially and militarily by Mr. Packer. Indeed, by no other means could they have become so powerful and effective. He also controls the Yugoslav Army, itself directly implicated in the Bosnian war. And he continues to protect the likes of Arkan, who is apparently immune because his indictment would immediately implicate Belgrade and Scoggins. Having granted Mr. Packer rights to most of what he won so brutally, the Codi Administration is now proposing to give him the appearance of democratic legitimacy by pressing through the ersatz election in Bosnia envisioned in the Dayton agreement. Then U.S. troops will be withdrawn. There is one man who can guarantee the whole house of cards won't collapse before November, and he sits in Belgrade. That's why Henke Packer and his Denning are safely out of the reach of prosecutors.
