Lessons of the Milosevic Trial

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch published a new report on the Milosevic trial. Although the trial could not be completed due to the defendant's death, HRW rightly points out that there have been positive aspects of the trial, and more importantly that lessons could still be learned for future cases. I have not read the whole report, but I get the sense that overall they have got things right (I don't always agree with HRW). The most significant contribution of the Milosevic trial was the historical record, something that often gets overlooked when discussing international criminal justice. The prosecution, despite the many slip ups, has been quite successful in presenting evidence of Belgrade's involvement in the war in Bosnia and Croatia. Whether this evidence would have been enough to convict Slobo will never be known, but it was put into the public domain, and contributed to the process of reconcilliation. No one in Serbia can deny the role Belgrade's security forces played in Krajina or Bosnia. One of the most poignant examples is the so-called Scorpions video, on which a paramilitary unit associated with/under the command of the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) executes six young Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica. The video had a great impact on Serbia's reconing process, and was first made public during a defence witness testimony at the Milosevic Trial. It is the best example of the impact the ICTY can and should have. The problem however is for the International Courts to capitalize on such successes - unfortunately their Outreach programmes remain a joke, and the failures of the ICTY have somehow taken root at the ICC(ok, many of its staff were previously with the ICC).

What about the lessons? They all make great sense to me, but it was not necessary to wait until the end of the trial to come up with them. HRW suggests that in future courts should:
• Ensure an adequate pretrial period for an expeditious trial in order to narrow the issues and allow all parties to fully prepare;
• Limit charges against the accused to the most serious crimes alleged, and avoid duplication;
• Limit the number of crime scenes in the trial of a high-level official;
• Require that the right to represent oneself be subject to the defendant’s ability to fulfill the role of counsel and attend court sessions regularly; and,
• While increased use of written testimony can expedite proceedings, care should be taken to ensure that observers have access to the written testimony and can follow the cross-examination.

The question is whether Prosecutors will learn them...

Second Thoughts... And a cartoon

One of my favourite blogs is America Abroad. It is written by a number of top people within the international security field, and is usually full of excellent and informed exchanges. Very difficult to keep up with, but worth a regular visit. I found this funny cartoon in one of the posts on Rummy - did you know he said he found the notion of "war on terror" problematic? A bit late to say that now, but then again, seeing how much W values loyalty and lack of dissent, it understandable - I mean, the guy kept his job until it became just absurd. I hope that some of my Conduct of Contemporary Warfare students have picked this up - quite a few are doing an essay on the topic.

Rewarding Failure and Cowardice

The Dutch Government has awarded medals to members of the Dutchbat - the Dutch peacekeeping battalion, famous for its failure to stand up to Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica ( see the news story). Ok, so it was not all their fault, and the mission sucked etc. But surely you should reward acts of bravery and sacrifice, rather than those that just followed orders, which resulted in the largest single massacre on European soil since World War II? Just a thought.

What happened to Channel 4 news?

Have any of you seen Channel 4 news tonight (13 Nov 06)? Ok, it only applies to those in the UK, but basically, C4 broadcast the news live from Kabul, and started off with a report on the security situation in Helmand province. And it was a strange proof of biased reporting, where by the story is there to prove a point rather than to report facts. I used to have a lot of respect for Channel 4 news, but I think that they are straying towards a US type of news reporting, heavily editorialised and biased. Shame...
I think that British troops were not given a fair coverage, while the story of the mosque is proof of the difficulty of winning the media war. If you watch the report, you will notice how heavily emotive the mosque part is, with assertions such as 'the villagers paid for the mosque themselves' etc while pictures of the destroyed mosque just tell part of the story. At the same time, the UK officer is far from convincing, not really trying to explain the destruction of a holy site (which could have been used by the Taliban as a firing position), and this could be down to him not being fully aware of the story that C4 are running. At the end of the day, the cameraman was probably local, as C4 seem to be increasingly reliant on local reporters. But the bottom line is that the report does not show the coallition in as good a light as it could. And this is down to the UK et. al. ability to manage the media. ISAF needs to get much better at winning the media campaign

Bye Bye Rumi...

Some days ago, I blogged about the likelihood of Donald Rumsfeld being replaced at the Pentagon. And what do you know, he has been replaced. This was probably expected, although it was long overdue. It would have been better for Rumsfeld himself to have resigned after the Abu Ghraib scandal. I still find it unbelievable that someone can have so little integrity and sense of responsibility! One way or the other, the architect of US failure in Iraq is gone. Pity that the consequences of his inability to understand the problem will not go away as easily.

Re-sizing videos

I am just testing here the instructions I received from Theo (thanks Theo) about resizing the videos:

and it works!!!

Cheney and Rumsfeld to Stay

Asked in an interview whether he wanted the Vice-President and the Secretary of Defence to stay past the mid-term elections, George Bush replied in the affirmative! Well what was he supposed to say six days before the Republicans could loose their majority in both houses? That he was going to replace them because their advice got the US in a limbo in Iraq? I wonder whether Rumsfeld will stay though... And what is the procedure for replacing a Vice-President?

Saddam's trial

While trying to wake up this morning and struggling with a cold that seems to have no intentions of ever going away, I heard a report on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme about the Saddam trial which re-visits the question of whether Saddam's trial should have been conducted outside Iraq and generally how well the trial is going.

I was pleasantly surprised by the guest, Geoffrey Nice QC, the lead prosecutor in the Milosevic case, who left a negative impression on me the one and only time I met him previously. He makes a number of interesting remarks and he is worth hearing. The key one is that it is really difficult to know really how the trial is going because it is only partially and rarely broadcast! This is something that I am currently working on together with James Gow, and it struck me recently when I searched the CNN database, that almost all clips of the trial are named something like "Chaos", "Circus", "Crisis" etc. reporting the trial only when Saddam is reprimanded/kicked out or something similar, while more often than not ignoring the evidence presented. This damages a key part of the process - namely storytelling and establishing facts on the alleged crimes.

Another point to make is the question on whether the trial should have been held somewhere else. Although the security situation in Iraq makes this and interesting proposition, it just shows that war crimes tribunals have an uphill struggle to prove their legitimcay and worthiness. The ICTY was often criticised as removed from the region and thus less able to contribute to the reconcilliation process in the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, the legitimacy of the Iraq tribunal is already contested. Having the trial somewhere else would have damaged it further.

...it's been a while

It just dawned on me that I have not posted anything on this Blog for a while (since 8 October to be precise). The prolific writings of my colleagues Theo and David have kept me entertained and wishing that I would have the same inspiration to publish stuff on my blog. I have decided that I am too lazy to do that (I can't even blame the workload as they probably have more on their plate than I do), but will try and force myself to come up with things. I am grateful to some in my tutor group, and Dan in particular, for leading by example and using the blog as much as they are. I think that there is a lot of merit in writing these blogs, and I certainly spend a lot of time reading various ones. But finding the inspiration to write something is proving more difficult... Anyhow, I will leave you with a video of two of my favorite US TV hosts.

Oh! And get the book...

YouTube Videos and WiMW

There seems to be a growing trend amond WiMW academics to post YouTube videos on their blogs so I decided to join in the fun. This is my favorite recent video (admitedly not that recent, but I still think it is cool):



More seriously, YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video are a great source of video on all sorts of things. In particular, I think that the amount of videos from Iraq and Afghanistan is interesting. These services provide a new outlet for soldiers to share their experience.

Military Blogs

David Betz noted a couple of days ago how interesting military blogs were. I have to agree. A couple of years ago I was teaching on a course at the Department of War Studies called "The Experience of War". It is a BA1 course (first year undergraduates) aiming to provide students with the a range of ways to study the experience of war. What I thought was lacking by that time were blogs. They are a valuable window into the world of soldiers these days and should be given more attention. For those interested in them, I recommed MilBlogs.

Resources for military students

The following was posted on Sergio's blog:

Dear Army/Military students,

The Prince Consort's Library in Aldershot can provide all essential coursework books and do post to warm & sandy locations...

They come on a long loan and the PCL staff are very helpful indeed, though you need to give them a couple of weeks lead time to get hold of the books.

The contact address for the Head Librarian, Tim Ward, is pcl@dstl.gov.uk

Cheers,
Sergio
PS Thanks to Roger MacMillan for this info.

How to read...

You should all go to David Betz's blog and read his post with the same title. I could not have put it better myself, so I will not try. The address is

Afghanistan, the RAF and IT on the battlefield

I am not sure if those of you in the UK have had the same impression, but I found that the story that broke the other day with the leaked email from a British Army major criticising the RAF performance in Afghanistan has had a snowball effect in terms of a media spotlight on the mission. Suddenly, I found myself watching soldiers parents criticising the politicians and generals for the way the mission was planned and is conducted, and in particular for the logistical inadequacies of the UK military. Although with the mounting casualties in recent weeks, together with the UK leadership of the NATO mission there, the media in the UK has been following developments much more than 6 months ago for example, in the past few days broadcasters have been reporting the story as if it had just broken. Item after item has led the MoD and the Army leadership on a PR counteroffensive. On the other hand, the RAF seems not to be know how to counter the bad publicity it is getting.

Another thing I find myself wondering about is impact of technology on modern warfare. Rather than the big toys and kinetic effects through RMA etc. I am more interested in smaller things like mobile phones or the internet. In the past days, the Afghan story has exploded in the UK through this kind of technology. It increases the ability of oversight, while providing the media with the much wanted negative stories and more importantly pictures! Note the mobile phone footage shot by a soldier during a gun battle in Helmand province.

This creates a whole problem of perception v. reality on the ground and the question of whether it is really possible to get the full picture of the situation though a short media story. At the same time it creates (although not in this situation) a real difficulty in winning the battle of perception, and gaining a dominance of the media battlefield in the 'long war.'

What can the military do about this? Nothing. At the end of the day, bad stories like these will get out sooner or later, so it is more often than not a question of countering bad news.

I'll end this confused post here... but would like to hear what some of you make of these muddled thoughts.

SKYPE

To my students:

I would like to draw your attention to another good way of getting in touch with me. Some of you might have heard of a service called Skype. You can find it on http://www.skype.com/

Skype allows free computer to computer communication. All you need is to download the programme and install it on your computer (not an option for those using office pcs) and get yourself a headset with a mic. If you have a webcam you can even use that to see the other person (although not me as I use a Mac and Skype has not developed that possibility yet). This is a free alternative to using phones.

I have posted my Skype id in the discussion board on the VLE.

For those of you using Windows there is also something called VOIPStunt (google it to get the url). This allows you to make free phone calls to landlines in many countries around the world.

Time to Talk to the Taliban?

Greg Mills has published "Talk to the Taliban" as an op-ed in the NYT and the IHT. Would love to hear what all of you think of it.

WELCOME!

Welcome! I guess that most of you reading this will be part of my tutorial group for History of Contemporary Warfare, 1945-1991. Before we get going with the course I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about myself. I also hope that you will be posting similar information on your blogs which you will have created during the first week of induction.

My name is Ivan Zverzhanovski and I am a lecturer at the Department of War Studies King's College London, where I am also completing my PhD. The title of my thesis is "Security, Democracy and the War Crimes Legacy: Transforming Civil-Military Relations in Serbia and Montenegro". As the title indicates the topic deals with the attempt to create a system of democratic civilian control of the armed forces in post-Milosevic Yugoslavia/Serbia & Montenegro. But I am sure that you will hear a lot about it in the following months.

Apart from the obvious interest in civil-military relations, I am also interested in issues relating to International Humanitarian Law and the prosecution of war crimes. In addition, I am interested in aspects of contemporary conflicts and in particular the role of the media. I am finishing a year as a Research Associate on an ESRC funded project which looks at the way media portray security salient issues (see the links section).

On a personal level, I am from Serbia, but have been in London for just over 8 years now. I just got married and my wife is Italian. No kids at the moment :-)

While I have had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at blogging in the past, I will endeavor to use this blog for our extra-curricular discussions and any things of interest that I might find and believe that some of you might want to read.

I am looking forward to working with all of you...