Chasing Tales

Let’s Imagine Putin in The Hague

I forgive you if you’ve never heard of Miroslav Tadić.

I had never heard of him, either, until he went on trial in The Hague in 2002.

His case before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was part of the 56-count “Šamac Indictment,” which alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity against six Bosnian Serbs for atrocities that occurred in the northern Bosnian town of Bosanski Šamac in the early 1990s.

The defendants engaged in illegal detentions, beatings, torture, forced deportation, and murder – part of a larger campaign that came to be known as “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia’s horrific 3½-year war.

For his bit part – the unlawful arrest and detention of civilians – Tadić received eight years in prison, though he served just two.

The Šamac indictment was overshadowed by bigger cases following the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. I never thought I would ever think about it again. Especially not three decades later. Not in Europe.

But here we are, with another criminal war, this time in Ukraine, this time perpetrated by the evil emperor that is Vladimir Putin.

These are among the crimes we are already witnessing in Ukraine:

Invasion of a sovereign country without provocation
Deliberate attack on civilian populations
Willfully causing great suffering
Extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity
Targeting of hospitals and cultural sites

The counts against Putin, whose list of atrocities now spans more than two decades, is growing by the hour.

Since taking power in 1999, Putin has overseen a scorched-earth crackdown in Chechnya; invaded two sovereign countries, Georgia and Ukraine; massively bombed civilian targets on behalf of a fellow dictator in Syria; maintained an illegal army presence in Moldova; and poisoned dissidents on foreign soil. In his own country, he has presided over the murder of dissidents, as well as the beatings and imprisonment of political opponents, protestors, journalists, and adherents of non-Orthodox faiths.

His regime also bears responsibility for the July 17, 2014, downing of flight MH-17, which killed all 183 passengers on board.

In sheer scale, Putin’s crimes already have surpassed those of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosević, who fomented the wars and ethnic cleansing that terrorized Bosnia and Kosovo. Milosević died in prison while on trial for his crimes.

Putin, who is threatening even more barbaric tactics, is rapidly approaching the same level of war criminality as the indicted Nazi officials, such as Hermann Göring, who commanded the Luftwaffe and ushered in the Holocaust. Göring was sentenced to death at the tribunal in Nuremberg but committed suicide before his execution date.

As was the case with Göring for post-war Europe and with Milosević for post-war former Yugoslavia, bringing Putin – and his henchmen – before a tribunal is vital. Without it, there will be no justice for the victims, no deterrence for other would-be murderous dictators, and little hope of reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine, indeed, between Russia and the free world.

Fortunately, the calls for justice and legal action against the rogue Russian president are becoming louder and more frequent. This week, the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced it would open an investigation, with prosecutor Karim Khan stating: “I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine since 2014.”

To those who say the prosecution of Putin amounts to pie-in-the-sky thinking, consider the story of Kemal Mehinović, a baker from Šamac, who spent two years in a detention camp, and whose wife and teenage children were forced to flee the country.

During a break in his testimony against Tadić, I interviewed Mehinović and asked him what he thought about Milosević, who was seated at the defense table in another courtroom down the hall.

“I never imagined Milosević would be on trial,” he said. “He was the one who started everything.”

For the sake of humanity, we must all start to imagine Putin sitting in the same chair as Milosević, Göring, and Tadić.

Your Choice, Bad Boy: Get Out – Or Get Blown Out – of the Sky Over Ukraine

With his war crimes against Ukraine now in full swing, Vladimir Putin has proven once and for all that the West’s strategy of ignoring/appeasing him does not work.

Putin understands just one thing: brute force. He is, after all, one of the most barbaric dictators in modern European history.

He and his henchmen love to invade and occupy sovereign countries (Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova); bomb civilian farmers on behalf of fellow dictators (Syria); poison his political enemies; and shoot down passenger planes over other countries (Malaysia Airlines flight 17, Ukraine). And in his own country, nothing pleases Vlad the Impaler more than beating and imprisoning Russian dissidents, journalists, LGBTQ, and adherents of non-Orthodox religions.

The West has known for years that Putin is risk averse. He does not want a serious fight. Recall that as a seasoned KGB officer, he watched the Soviet Union retreat from its sound ass-whooping in Afghanistan in 1989. Kicked out of what he thought was his own back yard – ouch, that must have hurt.

In Ukraine, Putin assembled an invasion force of 200,000 personnel, equipping them with an impressive array of 21^st century weaponry, to confront a much smaller and badly equipped Ukrainian army.

What the Ukrainians lack in numbers, however, they make up for with their will to fight and to protect their homeland. If this were purely a ground offensive, Russia would get crushed – just like that little old lady’s car was crushed yesterday by a big brave Russian tank.

Problem is, the Ukrainians are completely exposed to attacks from above from a large Russian air force.

That can change with a simple – albeit risky – move: a no-fly zone.

Under such a measure, NATO – four of whose members share a border with Ukraine – would declare, with Ukraine’s permission, that Russian combat aircraft in Ukrainian airspace constitute a clear and present danger to the NATO members’ security.

The message to Russia would essentially be this: “Stay out of the air – or you will get blown out of it. Your choice.”

This would give the Ukrainian homeland defenders a fighting chance against Attila Putin and his Huns.

A NATO no-fly zone is not without precedent. In April 1993, NATO began enforcing an operation called “Deny Flight” over the newly independent Bosnia-Herzegovina, where war had been raging for a year and whose population was under siege by rebel ethnic Serbs backed by the Yugoslavian government.

“During nearly 1,000 days, NATO enforced a no-fly zone and effectively prevented the warring parties from using Bosnian air space and made a key contribution to the peace process,” according to the U.S. Air Force Historical Support Division.

NATO jets shot down four Bosnian Serb aircraft – the first time in NATO’s 45-year history that it had used lethal force.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth for Putin if NATO were to create a no-fly zone: The United States and NATO have air superiority. They have more planes, hotter planes, better intelligence, and better training.

Enforcing a no-fly zone, of course, would not come without risks. You might recall the dramatic story of the USAF pilot shot down over Bosnia by Serbs wielding a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile.

Some critics argue that a no-fly zone would lead to a wider conflict with Russia.

But that wider conflict will almost certainly happen if Russia topples the government in Kiev and takes control of a wide swath of Ukraine, thus creating a humanitarian catastrophe, and winding up, heavily armed, on the doorstep of the free world to threaten peace and stability across the whole continent.

So, tell me, NATO, what the hell are you waiting for? A miracle?

A US Air Force EF-111 Raven deployed to Aviano Air Base, Italy, from the 429th Electronic Combat Squadron, Cannon Air Force Base, NM, flies over the Alps of Northern Italy while on a mission. The EF-111 Raven is designed to provide electronic countermeasures support for tactical air forces and will detect, sort, identify and nullify different enemyÕs radar in support of NATO enforcement of no fly zone over Bosnia.

Bosnia Reminisced

I had planned to revisit Sarajevo by now to write again about Bosnia and its war, as I had done 25, 20, and 15 years ago. (See snapshots of stories below.)

The pandemic, of course, dashed that plan.

So today, on the eve of the 25^th anniversary of the signing of the peace accords in Paris, I am reminiscing on the war, the peace, its victims – and whether anyone learned anything.

The Bosnian war, which lasted from 1992-95 was mind-numbingly brutal, with the worst atrocities in Europe since WWII. I learned about it in-depth through extensive interviews with refugees and their families left behind, whom I met on a half-dozen trips to the former Yugoslavia.

Almost everyone told me they were stunned that war had come again in modern times to the Balkans, especially to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had been a model of multiculturalism and integration.

Most Americans could not understand it, either, and put it out of their mind. Who could blame them? How could anyone understand war crimes and genocide descending upon a place that just eight years earlier had hosted the world for the ’84 Winter Olympics? How could anyone understand the absurdity of Serb-Muslim, Croat-Serb, and Muslim-Croat alliances at each other’s throats at the same time?

The war did not begin overnight. It began with the rise of charismatic populist politicians, like Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, who fanned the flames of nationalism, reopened old wounds, and flooded the airwaves with propaganda and blatantly false accusations against their rival ethnic groups. Not since Nazi Germany had propaganda resulted in massive crimes against humanity. The purges of Muslim residents from Serb and Croat communities in Bosnia came to be known as “ethnic cleansing,” a phenomenon that — because it was so unchecked in Bosnia — would occur again in Kosovo a few years later.

My immersion in the Bosnian war and its aftermath left me extremely uneasy at the time. I asked myself: Could something like that happen again elsewhere in Europe? Or, God forbid, in America? I remember on more than one occasion explaining it to friends and family like this: “Imagine if militia groups from the rural parts of the state armed themselves to the teeth, took up positions in the hills around Salt Lake, and rained 1 million artillery rounds onto the city? That’s what happened in Bosnia and Sarajevo.”

We can – and should – learn a lot about what happened in Bosnia. We should pay attention to the divisions there that continue to be stoked by cynical politicians, who now employ social media and trolls to disseminate conspiracies and lies about rival ethnic-political groups.

We should learn, and we should pay attention. But will we?

My dispatch on the day the peace accords were initialed in Dayton. Bosnians were unsure the deal would last. My editor told me: “We should send you back when the truce ends.”

Voices from Zagreb, Croatia, November 1995.

My first in-depth story about the victims of the Bosnian tragedy. Their tales left me drained and sleepless on a night. — My first in-depth story about the victims of the Bosnian tragedy. Their tales left me drained and sleepless on many a night.