Vladimir Lazarevic, a Serbian general who led his troops in the commission of war crimes against Kosovo’s civilians in 1999 and 2000, has surrendered to Serb government officials. He will be handed over to the United Nations war crimes tribunal sometime next week. Slowly but surely, the Serbian war criminals of the 1990’s are being brought to justice.

Serbia, under socialist leader Slobodan Milosevic, waged war on its neighbors throughout the 1990’s. Milosevic first tried to quell the self-determination of the Slovenes, killing at least 100 people, but failed. Then he went after Croatia. After failing again there, he attacked Bosnia’s Muslim population, slaughtering 250,000. The Serbs killed 7,000 Muslim boys and men in a single incident at Srebrenica. Failing again in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serbs murdered between 5,000 and 12,000 Kosovo Albanians and deported 800,000. All this mayhem came to naught. Yugoslavia’s former republics are all independent nations, except for Montenegro and Kosovo, which are autonomous in fact, yet not on paper. What a horrible waste of life.

Only a few of Serbia’s criminals, like Lazarevic, have been captured to date. According to the BBC,

The [war crime tribunal’s] indictment says he [Lazarevic] and three other Serbian generals "planned, instigated, ordered, committed" crimes against Kosovo Albanians during Belgrade's campaign against separatist guerrillas.

Police General Sreten Lukic and Army General Nebojsa Pavkovic are also wanted in The Hague. They are reported to be in poor health.

A fourth indicted general, Vlastimir Djordjevic, is believed to be in Russia.

The indictment says forces under their command "murdered hundreds of Kosovo Albanian civilians" in a "deliberate and widespread or systematic campaign of terror and violence".

The Serbian government has dragged its feet when asked to surrender its war criminals. It has even provided safe haven for these genocidal monsters. But let us hope that Serbia’s future may not be all bad. In June 2004 elections, the reform-minded, pro-Western Democratic Party defeated the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party. Bosnian Serbs admitted to committing the Srebrenica massacre.

Serbia has been under tremendous political and financial pressure from the U.S. and E.U. to surrender its war criminals. If one thinks cynically, maybe Serbia’s election of moderate reformers was in response to the country’s dire economic situation. If one thinks optimistically, maybe Serbs want to put the ugly past behind them. Who knows?

Notice in the quote from the BBC above, a Serb war criminal is hiding in Russia. Serbia and Russia have much in common. Once masters over other ethnic minorities, both groups have seen their empires crumble. G#d only knows how many Soviet war criminals are hiding in Russia – and one never hears anything about bringing them to justice.