They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague

Rating:
Summary: Monsters under the bed
Review: As Drakulic admits toward the end of this slim book, she cannot get away from 'the war'. Though she is Croatian, 'the war' is the entire breakup of Croatia and Bosnia from 1991-1995.

Instead of another story about the victims of that war, she looks at the perpetrators and studies the war crimes trials at the ICTY in The Hague.

The book is an attempt to paint a selection of the perpetrators not as 'monsters', which is the easy and obvious thing to do, but as human beings. It's an attempt to be honest for a moment, though not a complete attempt. But she takes a selection of known and not so well known accused war criminals and tries to show something about them as people, something that shows that these are human beings that are being accused and convicted of unspeakable behavior.

Among the well known figures are, of course, Slobodan Milosevic, whose chapter is called Beast in a Cage. It's a very good, if not obvious observation about this man. Despite so many articles, and stories, and at least four biographies, there is very little the outside world seems to know about this man's personal life, about him as a person. In the end, he really does look very gray, the ultimate bureaucrat who figured out how to stay in power for a long enough time before it all came crashing down. She depicts him as a man of no warmth whatsoever, which is consistent with many other descriptions of him. She invokes the thought that 'Evil is the absence of empathy', which is certainly relevant in many of these cases.

Other notable characters from this rogues gallery include Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb army, and still at large. Responsible for one of the most heinous atrocities of that lousy war, the Srebrenica massacre, Mladic is depicted as a man who did evil to others, and was punished from above by the suicide death of his daughter. Drakulic believes that not only will he be punished for life by her loss, but also by his likely failure to ever understand the reasons.

There is an executioner from the aforementioned massacre who received a 'light' sentence due to the circumstances--complete fear and being trapped and surrounded by death-intoxicated comrades. Two women get the consideration as well, the ladylike Biljana Plavsic, who plead guilty at The Hague and expressed remorse, and Mirjana Markovic, wife of Milosevic, who is living in her own world, it seems. While not on trial, she escaped to Russia, now wanted by the Serb government.

The writing is smooth and simple and the book is filled with memories of Drakulic's childhood as she relates to some of the characters via common references to a country that no longer exists. The ending two chapters about 'why we need monsters' and some final thoughts becomes a bit much since much of it is indeed obvious, as is she requires praise for speaking what more and more commentators should be speaking about these trials. The people involved were indeed human, they were 'ordinary' in some circumstances, even, but a combination of pressures, and circumstances, and elements inside them made them act in ways that horrify and mystify us. Yes, indeed, looking at these people from ground level, and not from above, will help us learn something about ourselves, which is of paramount importance.

Rating:
Summary: Five stars if your a big fan of Slavenka Drakulic
Review: This is kind of a chick-flick version of the war trials. Most chapters are personality profiles of an individual war criminal. Most of those discussed are already convicted. Karadzic is not covered at all, Milosevic and his wife each rate their own chapter, and Mladic is portrayed as (I kid you not) a Greek tragic figure. Usually only the crimes for which the subjects have been convicted are mentioned; I'm not sure if this adds or detracts from the book. Make no mistake, this is prose, not journalism; you buy this book to read Slavenka's writing, not to learn anything. There are no pictures although the physical appearance of the characters is continuously mentioned. The jacket photo of Drakulic is the worst I have ever seen of the woman; it's scary. All in all, this is a book for those familiar with the events and who wish a more personal insight, it is not a book for anyone wishing to learn the hard facts and events of the ICTY.