My Letter to Mr Karadzic
About Dusica L. Ikic-Cook


28 July 2008 It was a nice Monday evening, and I had some friends over.

They left around 11pm and I switched on the TV to hear the news that we were all waiting to hear one day. I was not surprised, not happy… I was not even shocked!

Radovan Karadzic was arrested. Now, what am I supposed to say to that? Is there anything that can be said? It has been so long that we almost started thinking it would never happen. And then, it happened! He was arrested. And the TV stations in Bosnia-Herzegovina started showing images of war. I felt as if the shelling was about to start. I waited for the sirens. I felt the same old anxiety that I thought I would never feel again. It was coming back. The images I no longer wanted to have. So I played a movie instead!

I managed to stay out of most of the news for a few days. I knew what was going on, but was keeping busy thinking about the real stuff – the work! I knew I had to write this blog. Actually, I did not have to write it, but I wanted to write about how I felt. But, I did not know what to write. What to say. It is a mixture of pain, regret, revenge, satisfaction and then – again – none of that.

So, I went on the net to check out what people were saying. And I found a web page where the people were invited to write the longest letter to Mr Karadzic. Instantly, I knew I had to write. That could be my salvation from this mixture of feelings. People are leaving their “letters” anonymously, but I signed mine with my name. If he ever reads it, I want him to know my name. Here is what I wrote and let me end this entry with it.

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Dear Mr Karadzic,

I address you as “mister”, using the polite form of the second person singular, but don’t misunderstand me and think it comes from any respect for you, your persona or your deeds. My parents taught me to salute certain people or groups of people in conventional ways, and one reason for this was to express a desire to distance oneself from them, or express a lack of sympathy or closeness.

Therefore, I do not like you Mr Karadzic; I do not respect you and I do not want to be in any relation with you. Fortunately, I could not even if I wanted to. Still, to my misfortune, and to your shame, I will remember your name - and will remember it well.

I was born in Yugoslavia; the child of an Orthodox father and a Catholic mother, born in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I grew up surrounded by all religions and nationalities and then I married a Jew and – by that – I rounded off formally what I had always felt deep inside me – I was, and still am, a cosmopolitan!

You see, Mr Karadzic, to me, all the Easters, Christmases, Bairams, Hanukahs and all other holidays have always been equally important. It has never been important to me how will I greet or congratulate a person, whether I will have a fruit cake or a baklava. Being surrounded with love was all that mattered.

I am sorry for you, Mr Karadzic and I am sorry that you have run next to Love, not being aware of it at all. Still, it might be the case that Love walked next to you – in fact – not wanting to touch you, seeing that you had not deserved Her. Maybe Love was wrong and maybe She should have at least tapped you on the shoulder and dilute the misery that perverted you.

No one was righteous in this war, which you and those like you imposed on us. There are only victims and the tears of mothers and fathers who lost their children. Do you at least think of the Serbian mothers (if none other) whose children you sent to death?

Can you, Mr Karadzic, perceive the scale of the tragedy (and of individual tragedies) you caused by your effort to become a Someone? How difficult was your suffering and your trauma to have caused you to seek love and self-verification through death? Oh, why did Love so brutally detour and mutilate you?

My pain can not be compared to the pain of a mother who lost her child. My pain is so small that it is not even worth mentioning. But, I will still tell you what you did to me with your selfishness, smugness, fear and insecurity.

You took my friends away from me, Mr Karadzic; you took my Enes, the one I loved going out with, but also my Milan, who I went to school with. You took my mom and dad; two wonderful people who were left jobless, got ill and died young. You took the education from my brother, because he could not go to school under the heavy shelling. You took my youth, Mr Karadzic; the years, when I was supposed to have been a careless student, you turned into avoiding shells and dreaming of chocolate. You took two boxes of childhood memories and photographs that were left in our second home, which your soldiers shelled to the grounds.

But, there is something even more valuable that you took from me. You took away my neighbourhood and smiles from the faces of my neighbours. You took the 11th July; a date which no longer presents just a day, but it is a day when the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina cries.

But, no point in talking to you, is there?

Shame on you, Mr Karadzic! Shame on you!

...based on the silly idea that one Serb, singlehandedly, caused all the troubles of that most Yugoslav of Yugoslav states. Certainly, he could have shortened--and won-- the war by refusing to give up the airport to the NATO-controlled United Nations... or by ignoring the certainty of heavy casualties and taking Sarajevo... or by ordering the hanging of drunk soldiers who misbehaved.

Ms. Cook could have blamed those who began to organize the sport killing of Serbs, launching Bosnia into a spiral violence.

She could have blamed Izetbegovic for tearing up the Lisbon Agreement.

She could have blamed the Big guys who guaranteed for Izetbegovic-- Bush and Clinton.

She could have blamed the Anglo journalists who tricked stupid Jews into supporting the neo-Nazis.

Instead she blamed one local politician.

The most stupid thing- is to blame a political leader of whatever without taking into account current situation in the wirld, where he acted many years ago.. In my country people usually do the same - probably, that's normal situation for all emotional positions..
But what I wanted to say is....


..Shame on you, Serbs!
I do not defend Karadic, I don't know,may be he really realized some war crimes ( but what a silly term! war is war. There're no crimes there...) ... but he acted in interests of Serbs! He protected their positions in Yogoslavia. And actually he acted in the interests of Yougoslavian sovereignty, from my point of view, that global powers decided to break.
.. And know you found nothing better, but throwing him to sacrificial altar of western demagogues!!! Shame on every Serb! As it was you, who elected your nowerdays leaders..
Just think what do this leaders think about now:" I have to be careful with this people.. TOday they elect me and support in everything, but tomorrow.. who knows - they may also admit me an international criminal and throw me out to any other court..."

No, Comsomolec. No, my friend, you cannot say that, there is the war of the ustasha, of the nazis, and there is the war the way it was codified by the Geneva Agreements. You do not torture or kill prisoners, period. Those who do, abandon civilization, as the West has done in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo.

But what do you exactly argue with? WIth my words that there's no crimes during wars? So, Karadzic situation is normal from your pont?

Yes, that is a problem. War crimes are a very bad thing, especially when we do them. Karadzic was a weak leader who could not order any hangings of his men for getting drunk and blowing up mosques.

On the other hand, I see the Hague Kangaroo Court as a fraud that will never order the arrest of its own backers, those who started the war.

Dusica L. Ikic-Cook is no doubt a very nice woman.

She is also a little ant. An ant?

Yes, a little ant, but not one of the tough hormiguitas of Daniel Viglietti.

No, she was swept up by the great Broom of History, for too long wielded by the West. By that I mean the Western Powers, the colonial powers that became the crushing Broom of NATO. The powers that attacked the East, in 1917, in 1945, and once again in 1990.

Dusica, a nice Serbo-Croat ant living in Sarajevo, was picked up by the Western Wind and was slammed against another ant. Sticks and sand are flying in the whirwind of NATO. The little ant is blinded by the dust. She turns and bites the ant that was thrown against her, the Serb ant, that she thought had attacked her.

Dusica L. Ikic-Cook writes for Balkan Insight, a creation of IWPR, started in the early days of the conflict by some nice Brits, upset at the idea of lunatics and jerks taking over the Balkans.

Nice Brits, they had the best intentions. But once war starts, you have to take sides. Western sources offered cash. So they were bought up and became a NATO organ.

A week politician doesn't mean a criminal who is to be gurged..

When a country sufferes such a cataclysm as Yougoslavia did in the begining of 90-th - who has right to acuse? But anyway - that should be Serbs interior business, how relating to Karadzic. That's why I do disappointed by what is happening

Same for statesmen. The bigger they are, the more famous and praised and honored they get, the more poisonous their sting. This kind of scorpions grow big and fat in those great palaces in the Western capitals.

They sting, they love to sting, they must sting. You cannot expect decency or balance or rationality from them.

We are dealing with the same suited thugs who created al-Quaeda and sent binLaden to Albania and the mujahaddin to Bosnia.

The same ones who supported European neo-nazis units fighting under the swastika in 1991.

...who sang human rights opera but saw no problem with their boys keeping a crematorium for Serbs in Klecka, Kosovo, in 1998.

...who fiddled democracy tunes as their allies cut up Serbs and Gypsies for their organs.

Greedy malevolent evil creatures. Whatever they do, it cannot surprise you.

As for the Serbs, many want to bow. But a majority, most surprisingly, still refuse to do so.

You don't have to describe western democracy fighters to me - I know what they are..

I'm talking of Serbs!
Kosovo was taken over almost by force- Serbs didn't have choice.
But Karadzic was given out voluntarily... in order to satisfy masters of new life that was chosen by them.

Well the NATO thugs weakened the country with the embargo. Imagine a business that loses all its customers, and is not allowed to buy spare parts for its machinery.

Then, after Serbia had agreed to sell out Bosnia and Krajina, and had even allowed 1000 NATO agents on the ground in Kosovo, NATO's bomber fleet set out to flatten Serbian factories and bridges. Sounds pretty forceful to me.

But the leaders and people in Belgrade stood their ground. They were very impressing, standing there on their bridges to deny the bastards a clean bloodless target, a shining example to contrast with the vile cowardice of Western nations.

They kept the faith until when Yeltsin tricked them with a deal that recognized Serb sovereignty over Kosovo, denied the plebiscite, allowed Serb troops back to guard borders after a cooling-off period. Perhaps he also promised to rush to Pristina that tank regiment from Bosnia.

Was he trying to trick Serbia or did he mean it and lost his spirit? Or was that tank regiment ordered to move by army commanders?