Radovan Karadzic is a Bosnian Serb former politician and convicted war criminal who served as the President of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War and sought the direct unification of that entity with Serbia.
Background
Radovan Karadzic was born on June 19, 1945 in the village of Petnjica in the Socialist Republic of Montenegro, Yugoslavia. Karadzic's father, Vuko (1912–1987), was a cobbler from Petnjica. His mother, Jovanka was a peasant girl from Pljevlja.
Education
Karadzic was educated as a psychiatrist but has always had an abiding love of literature and poetry. He studied both psychiatry and poetry in a year of graduate studies at Columbia University in New York City during 1974 and 1975.
Career
As a psychiatrist, Karadzic worked mainly in state hospitals and focused primarily on patients with neuroses, especially paranoia. Some observers have noted that many of his political pronouncements - which the Washington Post diplomatically noted seem to be "misstatements of fact" - often are meant to instill fear and a measure of paranoia in his listeners.
In April of 1992 the war, in what was once Yugoslavia, broke out. When Bosnia declared its independence, fighting began. The bordering state of Serbia has supported Serbs within Bosnia - the Bosnian Serbs that Karadzic leads. The Croats and Muslims formed an alliance to counter the much better armed Serbian aggressors. According to well-publicized census data, before the fighting began, Serbs in Bosnia comprised about 31 percent of the population. Muslims accounted for 41 percent, and Croats for 17 percent. By the beginning of 1995, Serbian-backed forces controlled about 70 percent of the territory in Bosnia. Karadzic obviously has strong Serbian nationalist leanings.
When Karadzic traveled to the United Nations in February of 1993 for yet another round of peace talks to resolve the conflict, there was talk of denying him a visa to enter the United States. Five Republican senators signed a letter asking that Karadzic be denied the visa. The Clinton Administration, arguing that Karadzic should be allowed to visit the United Nations, nonetheless had reservations.
Karadzic is generally viewed to have been handpicked for his position by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Together, the two Serb leaders have waged an ethnic cleansing campaign that has been denounced by the world community.
He has argued that allowing the Muslims to gain control of Bosnia will result in an Islamic foothold in Europe and the expansion of Islamic "fundamentalism. "
Karadzic has always called for a partition of Bosnia into three parts, each controlled by a rival faction. He has said he would be willing to give up some of the territory his forces seized in order to get a Serb-controlled government in one of the partitions. Not everyone believes that. The latest peace plan - in late 1994 - had the country divided up into two portions, with the Muslim-Croats controlling 51 percent and the Serbs 49 percent. The Bosnians accepted it; the Serbs rejected it. When U. N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali traveled to Sarajevo in November of 1994 to meet with Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader refused to meet him at the airport. The U. S. government did try to put pressure on Karadzic by applying the squeeze to Serbia and Milosevic. The United States figured that since it was not going to commit any military power to stop the fighting in Bosnia, it could put pressure on the Bosnian Serbs by applying economic sanctions to their suppliers-Serbia. But Milosevic refused to meet with a U. S. ambassador in February of 1995, further hurting the chances for peace. This came even though there had been a reported rift between Milosevic and his protege, Karadzic. The relationship between Milosevic and Karadzic is often compared to that between Frankenstein and his monster. But the rift between the two men was characterized in other quarters as a ruse, set up merely to placate the United States and to get the United States to stop putting pressure on Serbia.
In late March of 1995, Karadzic made an offer of peace that surprised many observers, since he seemed to hold the upper hand in the fighting. Bosnian Serb forces were faced with a lack of fuel to power their army and Karadzic was seen as ready to make concessions. And in late April, the United Nations-sponsored International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia formally named Karadzic as a suspected war criminal and asked that Bosnian leaders allow it to bring its own charges against the leader in order to prevent him from being tried twice - at the tribunal and in Bosnia. The tribunal indicted Karadzic on charges of genocide, other civilian-directed offenses, and crimes carried out by subordinates, including murder, rape, and torture. The general commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, was also indicted. Karadzic flaunted the Dayton peace accord, drafted in 1995 by world leaders to end the war in Bosnia. One of the agreement's provisions called for him to relinquish power and hold elections, which he refused to do until the United States threatened economic sanctions. It is speculated that although he has claimed that he has stepped down, he will continue to pull the strings. If he continues his hold, perhaps military force will eventually be necessary, according to the New York Times, returning the threat of more conflict in the already ravaged land. Biljana Plavsic eventually replaced Karadzic as Bosnian Serb president. However, she found herself locked in a power struggle with Karadzic's allies and fearing for her life ever since her outspoken attacks on the former president and threats to arrest Karadzic and his supporters for rampant corruption. Bosnian Serb ultra-nationalists loyal to Karadzic expelled Plavsic from the ruling Serb Democratic party in July 1997, demanding she step down from office. In response, she dissolved parliament and called for new elections on September 1, 1997, but Karadzic loyalists refused to recognize her decision and said they would continue to hold parliamentary sessions.
Karadzic went into hiding in 1997, with reports over the ensuing years placing him in, among other places, Serbia, eastern Bosnia, Russia, and Montenegro. Despite his status as an internationally maligned war criminal, he managed to publish a novel, Cudesna hronika noći (“Miraculous Chronicles of the Night”; 2004), and still enjoyed the support of some Serb nationalists. On July 21, 2008, nearly 13 years after being indicted by the ICTY, he was arrested near Belgrade, Serbia, by Serbian authorities; shortly thereafter he was transferred to The Hague to await trial. It was speculated that Serbia’s desire to gain entrance into the European Union played a role in its redoubled efforts to capture the fugitive. At the time of the arrest, it was revealed that Karadžić had disguised himself and used an alias, Dragan Dabić, in order to practice alternative medicine openly in Belgrade.
Karadzic’s trial at The Hague opened in the fall of 2009. The prosecution rested its case in June 2012, and Karadzic petitioned the court to have all charges against him dropped due to lack of evidence. Judges dismissed one of the two counts of genocide but upheld the remaining count (which related to the Srebrenica massacre) as well as nine other charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In July 2013 the second charge of genocide was reinstated against Karadzic. On March 24, 2016, Karadzic was found guilty of 10 of the 11 counts against him, including the crime of genocide against the residents of Srebrenica, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Achievements
Politics
Radovan Karadzic was leader (1990–96) of the Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia. He pursued a course of "ethnic cleansing" as he struggled to gain independence from the Muslim-controlled Bosnian government in the former Yugoslavia.
Personality
However much his critics deplore him, Karadzic has generated an element of interest among those observers who are required to chart his political comings and goings. He is "nattily dressed, " often surrounded by bodyguards, and often to be found holding court in posh European hotels. And no description of Karadzic is complete without mention of his long flowing hair, or his thick clumps of eyebrows. The Washington Post once described Karadzic as "a robust bear of a man [who] talks as much as a traveling salesman. " Of course, at various times during the three-year-old conflict, which Karadzic has had a great role in prolonging, descriptions of him have been much harsher. Former U. S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger pointed out in 1992 that Karadzic was a possible war criminal because of the ethnic cleansing policy he promulgated.
Connections
While in Sarajevo, Karadzic met and married another psychiatrist, his wife Lilyan, and they have a son and a daughter. Although he must have been aware of ethnic strife from his years in the hills of Montenegrin, he and his wife's family lived together in an apartment building in Sarajevo with Muslims, Serbs, Croats, and Croat-Hungarians.
Karadzic's daughter, Sonja, was identified in a scathing New Yorker editorial against Karadzic as his current main buffer against an increasingly hostile international press corps.