The Search For Bosnia's Ghosts

Karadzic seems to feel something is afoot. According to reports in Pale, he recently changed his bodyguard; the detail is now believed to consist of about a dozen hard-core paramilitaries, or no more than can travel in three vehicles. NATO officials say Karadzic is moving around regularly. He travels in and out of the Serb Republic and across to neighboring Montenegro, where he was born and which can be reached by trails across the mountains.

Any snatch operation would probably be carried out by elite units, like the French squad that last year nabbed Karadzic's top lieutenant, Momcilo Krajisnik, from his home in Pale. A spokesman for the NATO force in Bosnia, Captain Andrew Coxhead, concedes that ordinary peacekeepers who encounter him during a routine patrol might not be equipped for the job. "You don't want to mess with these guys without sufficient force," he says, remembering an incident in Foca when an attempt to bag a suspect went wrong; the fugitive blew himself up with a hand grenade and injured four German soldiers.

Still, the problems with an arrest of Karadzic are ones NATO would like to have. In Sarajevo in July, Robertson was emphatic. "We don't know where he is," said the Secretary-General. "If we knew, he would be arrested. Make no mistake about that." That line is echoed--less credibly--by officials in the Serb Republic, who claim that they have no useful intelligence and that, in any event, Karadzic isn't on their turf. Nonsense, says Del Ponte. "At any given time, the authorities of the Serb Republic know, or are in a position to know, the whereabouts of our most-wanted fugitives."

Why should the world care about a man wandering the mountains of eastern Bosnia? One reason to do with the past and one concerning the future: Karadzic's capture would help settle who precisely ordered the murder of as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, the worst atrocity in Europe since 1945. It would also send a signal to other war criminals that they can no longer expect to play an open part in Bosnian society. U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller says an arrest would "help change the way business is done in Bosnia" by undermining the communist-era system of patronage and corruption that Karadzic and his party have fostered.

Don't look to the Serbs in Foca for help. Pictures of Karadzic in wartime remain prominently displayed in the local offices of his party, along with stickers proclaiming--in English--HE IS PEACE. HE MEANS FREEDOM! Several in the top ranks of the local police have been accused by human-rights groups of ethnic cleansing and of brutally interrogating inmates at a local concentration camp. Drug barons loiter at the town's dilapidated hotel; foreign aid is nonexistent. Whether Karadzic is found soon or not, the forgotten, unforgiving towns of eastern Bosnia are likely to remain places where the shadow of the past lies heavily on the silent streets.