SEEDS OF EVIL

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Karadzic grew up a hill-country peasant boy in a society ripped apart by World War II and ferocious ethnic battles. His path to power was winding, complicated and unlikely. Born on June 19, 1945, in a tiny mountainside hamlet in the republic of Montenegro, he tended the farm animals and listened to traditional songs of brave battles against the Turks--learning nationalism by osmosis. His father was away during those early years, imprisoned for his wartime deeds as a member of the Chetniks, nationalist guerrillas who fought Nazi occupiers and Marshal Tito's communist partisans alike. After eight years of primary school in Montenegro, Karadzic in 1960 joined the flood of young peasants moving to the cities. He had big hair even then, but no money, and thought of himself as a poet. His decision to study medicine in Sarajevo, however, was eminently practical, as medicine was a likely path to security and status.

At medical school he had a romance with a classmate, Ljiljana Zelen, the daughter of an old and wealthy family. Karadzic married Ljiljana, and they lived in a downtown apartment building at 2 Sutjeska Street, where her parents also resided. Some of Karadzic's friends thought his new wife was unattractive and domineering. "We never understood why he married her," says one. "Maybe it was the typical calculation of a poor peasant boy. She could provide him with housing, food and money." Karadzic pretended not to notice his comrades' disdain and called Ljiljana his "Creole beauty." They have two children, a daughter and a son, both in their 20s.

During the 1960s Karadzic's life-style offered a complete contrast to what came later. He was charming, well liked, friendly, a bit shy. In keeping with Sarajevo's multicultural past, he lived in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, had several Muslim and Croat friends and never showed any sign of friction with them. "I could not have had a better neighbor," says Ismail Hodzic, 64, a Muslim who still lives next door to Karadzic's former apartment. Karadzic mixed with the Bosnian capital's young bohemians, writers and poets who stayed up all night discussing life, literature and art. Some of them were Serb nationalists, and two of them, both poets, later joined Karadzic's Cabinet.

He wrote poetry as well, though his former friends are contemptuous of his efforts. One poem from 1971, apparently an attempt to capture the feelings of Yugoslav peasants, was called, "Let's Go Down to the Town and Kill Some Scum." Says writer and essayist Marko Vesovic, 51, a fellow Montenegrin who has known Karadzic since 1963: "His poems didn't have character. He imitated the style of whoever impressed him." But Karadzic's buddies sympathized with him because, says Vesovic, "while we were studying literature, he was dissecting stinking bodies" in medical school.

Vesovic and another friend, Nikola Koljevic, now a Bosnian Serb vice president, spent a week editing and improving a book of Karadzic's poems. It was published, and Karadzic neither objected nor thanked them for the changes they had made. Vesovic, who is planning to write a biography of Karadzic, says his former friend's only good book was a volume of poems for children. "He seemed to have understood children; he had this intuitive ability to grasp other people's minds if he wanted to."