It takes something like the arrest of Karadzic to bring out the lynch-mob mentality of Mudcat in all its glory.

If Karadzic had not let the Bosnian-Serb rebellion, Serbs in their thousands would have been queueing up to take on the job. Why?

Paul Burke said:

Serbia should be an object lesson to everybody on the effects of racism; as a part of Yugoslavia, it was an advanced economy, just outside the Western European standard and way in advance of almost anything in the Warsaw Pact; after the civil war, it is a useless wreck, unable to crawl out of the mire of its own obsession and resentment, and living on pointless myth and the hope of Russian mischief- making.

I agree with most of that. But anyone who blames Karadzic for the transformation is living in a make-belief world of justice US-style.

Yes, things were better before the civil wars. They were better because of the stability achieved during the Tito years. But in the decade following his death in 1980 there were many signs that the stability would break down. The Vatican, US and Germany seized the moment to pursue their own selfish interests and incite catholic Slovenia and Croatia to secede from the Yugoslavia that Paul Burke recalls. They were happy to leave the economically disadvantaged rump, destabilised by a suddenly unweildy Serb majority, to fend for itself. With one exception: Bosnia & Hercegovina. Bosnia too was invited to seek independence, even though the whole world community knew that with its heady mix of muslims (a majority), Serbs and Croats the tiny country had no prospect of sustaining itself.

The western media at this time - the US media in particular - was as unidimensional as it has ever been on any matter. The US ambassador to Yugoslavia at that time launched a devastating attack in July 1990 on US reporting, singling out in particular the National Geographic for "misleading literally millions of Americans" with its anti-Serb rhetoric. "In a sense," he said, "Yugoslavia invented perestroika and glasnost and has been seeking, in fits and starts, to reform its political and economic systems. The process has moved more slowly than we would have hoped... Indeed I have been asked by people who should know better, 'When is Yugoslavia going to follow the pattern of Hungary, Poland and other east European countries?'"

That unthinking anti-socialist mentality, still deeply ingrained in many a US psyche, found a welcome fellow traveller, if I may use that term, in John Paul II, who had allowed his own experiences of communism to cloud his worldview.

At that time the US had no major problem with Islam and was funding and arming the muslim warlords of the Mujahaddin. What matter if Bosnia was ruled by a defeated presidential candidate, Izetbegovic, who had declared his muslim-fundamentalist credentials years earlier and republished them in his (failed) election campaign? But as I have said before, Isetbegovic wore a suit. How different might American perspectives of the Middle East have been if Yasser Arafat had worn a suit.

In the subsequent civil wars, Serbs, Croats and muslims engaged in bilateral and multilateral fighting in every possible permutation, and throughout it all, according to the simplistic mentality of the US-admin, the Serbs were the Bad Guys. Thus the ICTY - the kind of institution that would never be allowed to exercise jurisdiction over an errant US soldier or politician - has indicted slightly more than 100 people for alleged war crimes. Just six (I think) of those were none-Serbs and at least two - Haradinaj and Oric - were either acquitted or given derisory sentences for their crimes. In any war, such an imbalance in the perpetration of crimes is plainly farcical.

The ICTY will have to weigh the respective responsibilities of Karadzic and Mladic in some outrageous crimes, bearing in mind that the two were sometimes openly at adds - for instance when Mladic point-blank refused Karadzic's order to withdraw beseiging artillery from Sarajevo. For that reason justice will be better served if circumstances arise whereby he and Mladic can be tried together. Maybe the trial will also take a look at episodes such as the Sarajevo market atrocity in August 1995. UK and French ballistics experts found no evidence of Serb involvement, and suspected it had been ordered by Izetbegovic to induce the massive NATO bombing raids on Bosnian-Serb positions which followed within two days.

Maybe too, at last, there will be opportunity for measured assessment of Srebrenica. Received wisdom in the west is that 8,000 muslims were killed there, whereas acording to the New York Times about 3,000 of those 8,000 made it back across the front lines into muslim-held areas. Izetbegovic denied the Red Cross access to pursue the matter, just as muslims and Croats, under guidance from the American PR agency Ruder Finn, always denied international access to their holding camps, unlike the Serbs. The court may note that Srebrenica, far from being a "safe haven," had never been demilitarised. Instead it had become a base from which muslim forces, under the aforementioned Oric, wnet out and destroyed some 90 surrounding Serb villages - killing about 2,000 people, overwhelmingly civilians, in the process. And maybe the tribunal will address the question of why Isetbegovic withdrew his forces from Srebrenica, leaving the civilian population undefended, shortly before the Serb offensive was launched.

Of course, Srebrenica was a sickening outrage anyway and if it can be established that Karadzic had a hand in it he will get no sympathy from me. And many Serbs too would be content to see justice done (McGrath is right about that). Mladic is a different proposition altogether. He was rated by several of the most senior western commanders as a general of outstanding genius, for which reason he is still widely revered by Serbs both military and civilian. He was also a cultured individual, which makes it inexcusable that he was also a thug. I would not pass judgment on him for Srebrenica but will settle for the tribunal verdict if he ever stands trial. But more than anyone he carries responsibility for the three-and-a-half-years seige of Sarajevo, which was a grossly disproportionate response to the deaths of about 120 Serb soldiers, travelling in convoy before the wars had begun. And I would be pleased to see him made to account for the devastation he wreaked on Dubrovnik and its population.

So let justice be done. But let's not overlook the stupendous hypocrisy whereby America imposes justice on everyone else while itself refusing to accept the authority of the very international courts that apply that justice. Let us not forget Thatcher's decision to bomb the Belgrano, with the loss of nearly 200 young Argentinians, as it headed away from the battlefield. Let us not forget countless other criminal decisions by leaders of the western democracies. (America has bombed 40-odd countries since WW2: how much of that aggression would withstand scrutiny by an international court>) And let us remember that after any war the only justice will be victor's justice. I find it disturbing that people are ready to nail their colours to that unsavoury mast with the enthusiasm that some Mudcatters have brought to this thread.