High expectations sour Butcher of Bosnia trial

Before we can appreciate what has been accomplished by trying the butcher of Bosnia and the belligerent of The Hague, Ratko Mladić, for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, we must acknowledge the many things the trial did not accomplish.

Acknowledge, but not admit. The absence of these things is no failure; the failure is to have ever supposed they might be the goal.

The trial did not achieve world peace. This is a disappointment to the advocate of international criminal justice who insists that convicting dictators and warlords of criminal violence is only valuable by virtue of preventing other men from committing acts of violence.

It’s impossible to say that the threat of international criminal prosecution hasn’t deterred any would-be international criminals. It simply hasn’t deterred all. In the years since charges were listed against Mladić at the UN-backed tribunal, Syria’s regime has committed mass torture and mass murder, and Saudi Arabia’s has bombed Yemen’s hospitals, schools and marketplaces.

The trial did not achieve even regional peace and fraternity — a tolerance toward one’s neighbours’ existence perhaps, but a tolerance not so keenly felt as to result in the banishment of those criminals who threaten their neighbours’ existence.

As Mladić was found guilty of war crimes at The Hague, he was billed as a war hero on posters in Serbian communities.

Nor did the trial produce a common understanding of the truth. Mladić was convicted of genocide for his crimes in the town of Srebrenica; the mayor of Srebrenica, an ethnic Serb, denies genocide was ever committed there, and the trial, many Serbs say, was an exercise in demonization. The revelation of facts is no guarantee of their acceptance, and a guilty verdict no assurance of remorse.

In other municipalities, Mladić’s guilt of genocide couldn’t be established. The trial may have offered no justice to these families. And many families given justice for Srebrenica didn’t feel they received it. What is one life sentence compared to more than 7,000 lives lost?

There is no closure to be found here, no palatable truth, and no total certainty of a peaceful future. But in an era when the rules-based liberal international order is under attack from the very states that built it, is it not better that there is some accountability and some closure?

And some truth? And a bit of peace?

For the most rigid critics of international criminal justice, particularly critics of the International Criminal Court, the answer is no. The failure of international criminal justice to do everything is tantamount to the failure to do anything.

Though it’s generally understood on the domestic front that a murder conviction will not prevent all murders, and that unbalanced prosecutions of some groups shouldn’t prevent the prosecution of all groups and that trials won’t heal all wounds, more seems to be expected of international justice.

This is at least as much a failure of expectations as anything else.

In international criminal trials, in domestic trials, in everything, if our expectations are unrealistic, we will fail to appreciate what is given, sabotage what is there and leave ourselves with nothing. But where it occurs to us that the most important things grow slowly — democratic institutions, just societies, peace — and never without our efforts and failures, we may marvel at how incredible it is that a small measure of what we want is ever found.

Last week, a bit of justice was found at The Hague. It may be followed by a bit more. That’s all.

— Shannon Gormley is an Ottawa Citizen global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.