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The Allies killed more Germans during WWII than did the Germans kill Allies. Yet those tried at Nuremberg were only German.

What's the correlation between the two?

I'll get you some figures on the indictments.

by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 08:16:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yeah, and NATO killed people in Yugoslavia, and NATO war criminals will never be prosecuted.

But that is not the case you were making. You were making the case that the court is stacked against Serbia and in favour of Albanians, Bosnians and Croats, specifically, not just against the locals and in favour of the White People.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 09:57:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The wikipedia articles on the Yugoslav Wars give some figures...

  • War in Slovenia: no civilian casualties
  • War in Croatia: 4,500 dead Croatian civilians, 200,000 displaced; 2,300 dead Serbian civilians, 300,000 to 450,000 displaced
  • War in Bosnia: 33,000 Bosniac civilians dead; 2,000 Herzegovine civilian dead; 3,600 Serb civilian dead
  • Kosovo War:
    Around 100 Albanian civilians killed by NATO forces [7]
    NATO bombings: Human Rights Watch was only able to verify 500 civilian deaths throughout Yugoslavia, [8][9] with other sources stating from 1,200 to 5,700 [8]

In terms of civilian deaths, Bosniacs dwarf all other groups combined. And in terms of displaced civilians, lacking figures for Bosnia for comparison the war in Croatia takes the cookie.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 10:48:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
so assuming that casualties are proportional to indictments doesn't that work out that too few Serbs and Croats have been Indicted? if we assume Bosnians are correctly totalled? If Serbian numbers are correct then too mant croats and bosnians indicted, and if Croation figures correct, then too many Bosnians, and too few Serbs?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:36:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How about indictments anticorrelated with civilian deaths of the same nationality? That would be three points along a straight line on a log-log plot. The exponent might be different from 1.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:44:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Actually, what's more relevant is the number of convictions - IMHO.

You can also correlate with the number of expulsed.

by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:58:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Then dig out those, and we'll play with them.

You're the one who brought the number of indictees to the table. And you're the one who's claiming that the court is packed.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:13:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And the number of acquittals, and of withdrawn indictments...

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:29:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm actually very surprised at the number of Serb casualties in Bosnia and Croatia. The truth will probably be almost impossible to establish.

These figures do put into perspective the accusations against Serbs for organizing ethnic cleansing. What is clear is that the Serbs were the most 'cleansed' population of all four ethnic/religious groups.

by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:52:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"Displaced" and "ethnically cleansed" are not - quite - the same thing, though.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:55:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
What's the difference?
by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:59:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The difference between - say - an American who flees from Saigon and a Khmer intellectual who flees from Phnom Penh.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:17:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]
An American who flees from Saigon is not at home. He's an occupier. Serbs were at home. In both Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 04:05:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Because there were no civilian Americans living in Saigon before the outbreak of hostilities? I find that hard to imagine...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 04:08:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Even so. Americans have no claim whatsoever to Saigon. Serbs have been living in Krajna and Bosnia for over 600 years! In fact, they were in Bosnia BEFORE the Muslims and in Krajna they were a majority since the 14th century.
by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 04:23:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Which, by the way, is not the case of Albanians in Kosovo - who after WWII represented some 40% of the population. Tito's policies changed that.
by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 03:48:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
In the case of the war in Serbia there are several waves of displacement.

First there are Serbs who fled Croatia before the war started.
Then there are Croatian civilians who fled the shelling of civilian areas.
Then there are Serbs who came into the captured territories.
Then there are Serbs who fled before Operation Storm actually started.
Then there are Serbs who fled during Operation Storm.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:00:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Then there are Serbs who came into the captured territories.

I was not aware of this. Who came from where to do what? This is the official NATO line.

by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:07:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I mean war in Croatia not in Serbia.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:23:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That's what I understood. Which Serb in his/her right mind would move to Krajna during the war? Krajna was ancient Serb homeland since the 14th-15th century - when the Habsburgs officialized this area as being Serb in return for protection against the Turks. The Serbs never 'occupied' Krajna... nor any part of Bosnia for that matter.
by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:30:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]
vladimir:
The Serbs never 'occupied' Krajna... nor any part of Bosnia for that matter.
The Krajina had Croatian and Serb villages interspersed among each other - the Krajina was not 100% Serb and apparently this was in part encouraged by Tito (both the interspersing and the concentration in majority Serb or Majority croat towns).

First some Serbs fled because they feared they would be attacked. Then the Croats were driven off by shelling, then the Croatian villages were settled or (more often) destroyed to prevent return. Then the same happened in reverse with Operation Storm: some serbs fled before it, some were driven off and then villages were destroyed to prevent return, or settled.

All of these with various degrees of "allegedly" and various sizes of people desplaced and houses destroyed.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 01:36:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
We agree on the sequence of events except for the settlement of the abandoned Croat villages or homes. Who would have gone there? Except maybe Serbs displaced from other regions... but even there, refugees chose Serbia for peace... not Krajna to face another war.

It is in fact so difficult to 'resettle' an area that the Croats, some 13 years after Operation Storm, still can't fill up the empty ex-Serb villages. They're ghost towns.

by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 02:28:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That might be because the industry in the areas was destroyed so the ability to support a population is greatly reduced.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 05:17:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't think so. It means that the Croat population hasn't increased by 300 000 over the past 10 years. In fact Croatia has a negative population growth rate.

Second, the Serbs didn't have a scorched earth policy. They didn't even have time to properly collect their belongings and flee when Storm began... let alone destroy industry.

Finally, the area was mostly agrarian - not industrial.

by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 02:55:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The Croatian invaders did destruction all on their own. However, there was not much industry to destroy, more the homes. The area was more agrarian. (Which also means that minefields could limit re-settlement, though minefields were more in the border regions and Croatia claims to have removed most.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 05:23:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
In addition, supposedly Croatia recognises the right of Krajina Serbs "who didn't commit war crimes" to return.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 05:39:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But they all committed war crimes, didn't they? That's why nobody's going back. I know people who've lost property in Dubrovnik and can't recover it.
by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 05:49:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
They are afraid they would be accused of war crimes if they came back, which is a different proposition than "they are all war criminals".

Not having first-hand knowledge I would have to take things such as the follosing at face value...

Serbs of Croatia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tension between Serbs and Croatians were violently high in 1990s.[citation needed] The violence has reduced since 2000 and has remained low to this day, however, significant problems remain.[15] The participation of the largest Serbian party SDSS in the Croatian Government of Ivo Sanader has eased tensions to an extent, but the refugee situation is still politically sensitive.[citation needed] The main issue is high-level official and social discrimination against the Serbs.[4] At the height levels of the government, new laws are continuously being introduced in order to combat this discrimination, thus, demonstrating an effort on the part of government.[15] For example, lengthy and in some cases unfair proceedings,[15] particularly in lower level courts, remain a major problem for Serbian returnees pursuing their rights in court.[15] In addition, Serbs continue to be discriminated against in access to employment and in realizing other economic and social rights.[citation needed] Also some cases of violence and harassment against Croatian Serbs continue to be reported.[15] The property laws allegedly favor Bosnian Croatians refugees who took residence in houses that were left unoccupied and unguarded by Serbs after Operation Storm.[15] Amnesty International's 2005 report considers one of the greatest obstacles to the return of thousands of Croatian Serbs has been the failure of the Croatian authorities to provide adequate housing solutions to Croatian Serbs who were stripped of their occupancy rights, including where possible by reinstating occupancy rights to those who had been affected by their discriminatory termination[15] The European Court of Human Rights decided against Croatian Serb Kristina Blečić, stripped her of occupancy rights after leaving his house in 1991 in Zadar.[16]

Operation Storm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Approximately 300,000 Croatian Serbs were displaced during the entire war, only a third of which (or about 117,000) are officially registered as having returned as of 2005[update]. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 200,000 Croatian refugees, mostly Croatian Serbs, are still displaced in neighbouring countries and elsewhere. Many Croatian Serbs cannot return because they have lost their tenancy rights and under threats of intimidation.* Croatian Serbs continue to be the victim of discrimination in access to employment and with regard to other economic and social rights. Some cases of violence and harassment against Croatian Serbs continue to be reported.[53] Some of the Croatian Serbs will not return out of fear of being charged for war crimes, as the Croatian police has secret war crime suspect lists; Croatia passed an Amnesty law for anyone who had not taken an active part in the war, but many do not know if they are on amnesty list or not because amnesty rules are not clear enough.[5] [6] The return of refugees is further complicated by the fact that many Croats and Bosniaks (some expelled from Bosnia) have taken residence in their vacated houses. Another reason for the non-return of refugees is the fact that areas that were under Croatian Serb control during the 1991-95 period were economically ruined (unemployment in RSK was 92%). Since that time, Croatia has started a series of projects aimed at rebuilding these areas and jump-starting the economy (including special tax exemptions), but unemployment is still high.
(my emphasis in both cases)

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 06:49:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Your statistics are questionable Migeru. I've got other figures for Bosnian casualties:

Civilian Muslims and Croats = 38,000
Civilian Serbs = 16,700
Bosnian Muslims soldiers = 28,000
Bosnian Serb soldiers = 14,000
Bosnian Croat Soldiers = 6,000

Sources (all offer the same data) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War#Casualties
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/11/bosnia-death-toll-revealed.html
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/utenriks/4260912.html

Now compare this to the ICTY indictments and you have a seriously biased court.

by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 12:18:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Albanian civilians = 3,368 (Red Cross)
Serb Civilians = 8,000 out of a total of 12,000 casualties according to The Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, an organization funded by the European Commission [53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War
by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 01:14:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
No, you compare that with indictments. We're not here to do your homework. You allege a packed court, you get to demonstrate it. All the way to q.e.d., with citations, arithmetic and the whole Turkish horn orchestra.

(FWIW, my quick mental arithmetic puts the ratios in my post downthread at 1/400 Serbian indictees vs. other people's civvies and 1/1600 Croat indictees vs. other people's civvies, respectively 18*10^5 Serbian indictees times dead Serb civvies, vs. 15*10^5 Croat indictees times dead Croat civvies.

So by one measure, they draw even - give or take 20 % - and by another measure you go from a factor of three to a factor of four. At the same time, the sensitivity to the choice of metric between these two decreases to a factor of four.

Still not convincing.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 02:52:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
We can also compare things to the ratio of convictions to acquittals/withdrawals.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 02:55:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Relax Jake. You're the one who said :
Then dig out those, and we'll play with them.

Besides, my comment wasn't an order or a request that anyone should do something. It was like saying "now look at that"... that's all.

by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 02:59:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
No, you were saying,

Now compare this to the ICTY indictments and you have a seriously biased court.

In other words, doing the actual arithmetic. Which is your job.

That's not to say that I wouldn't happily do it for you once, or twice or even three times. But you used up that quota half a dozen posts ago, and I'm tired of first having to (re)construct your arguments from scattered data and vague insinuation before I can even begin to consider it properly.

Presenting free-floating data and claiming to have made a case is like presenting a bucket of paint and claiming that you've made a painting.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 04:55:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Presenting free-floating data and claiming to have made a case is like presenting a bucket of paint and claiming that you've made a painting.

What on earth are you talking about? This is a discussion, it's not a PhD thesis!

by vladimir on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 03:18:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yeah, and that's probably why nobody's demanding that you cite affidavits, dig out old books and newspaper articles or whatever else historians do for their Ph.d.

But when you bring numbers to the table, you either do it to make a point - in which case you need to present a plausible model to translate those numbers into a conclusion.

Or you're not - in which case the numbers are just noise that add nothing to the debate.

You're the dude making claims here. You've got to present a case if you want those claims to be taken seriously. And so far, what you have presented is not a case, any more than a disorderly pile of bricks is a house.

And if you don't want your claims to be taken seriously, then why the are we having this discussion, anyway?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 11:53:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't quite get your mathematical logic.
> 1 Serb indicted for every 400 non Serb civilian casualties
> 1 Croat indicted for every 1 600 non Croat civilian casualties
That's just 4 times as many Serbs indicted per enemy casualty than Croats. In my books that's super stacked.
by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 03:14:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
sigh

A factor of four is not conclusive evidence with a measure this crude. Certainly not for a charge as serious as packing a court of law. Particularly when another, not notably cruder, measure using the same data essentially breaks even.

If you massage the numbers enough and then cherry-pick the "right" metric, you can make them say virtually anything (which is why we spend so much time around here taking popular econometrics apart to see how they work).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 03:34:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
yeah right
by vladimir on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 04:49:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Ballpark guesstimates give you the order of magnitude, and little more than that. This discrepancy (which, by the way, only exists when using one ballpark metric - you conveniently ignore that it goes away when DoDo and I used two other ballpark metrics) is barely more than half an order of magnitude. It says jack shit about the court being packed, unless you're in the hundred-to-one range or something of that order of magnitude.

Now, you may argue that this test is too crude (guilty as charged - it's a ballpark figure using a ballpark metric, nothing more). But then I invite you to construct a better metric - and argue that it is indeed better - and run the numbers on your own. Show your math, because when I do my math, it does not add up to your conclusion.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 05:01:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Err. No. Statistical significance is not as of 1:100. 1:4 is certainly statistically significant in this case. I'll do a t test as soon as I have some time and I'll post the results. Maybe that'll convince you.
by vladimir on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 03:20:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm not talking about statistical significance. Statistical significance requires that your model at least attempts to correct for confounding factors. This one doesn't. It's a ballpark figure, and as such, it can tell you only whether you are at least roughly in the right ballpark. 1:4 is in the right ballpark. It is possible, of course, to be in the correct ballpark and still be offside, and a ballpark test won't allow you to decide that. To do that, you need something more precise. And if you want something more precise, you have to base your model on assumptions that aren't pulled out of my ass. But you're the one claiming offside. I'm not. So all I had to show was that the ball was not self-evidently offside. Which it isn't.

Besides, it's only 1:4 by one of the measures. The two other measures that have been put forward in this thread call it even. Furthermore, the measure that's 1:4 is the least appropriate one, because it assumes that all sides had an equal hand in all deaths that weren't from their own side, which is obviously nonsense.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 11:16:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
JakeS: ...you have to base your model on assumptions that aren't pulled out of my ass

Exactly which of my assumptions have come out of your ass?

by vladimir on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 03:30:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That all sides were equally responsible for all the deaths that were not their own nationals, that the number of actual war criminals is at least roughly proportional to the number of people killed, and that the number of war criminals for whom there is enough solid evidence to prosecute is at least roughly proportional to the number of war criminals.

None of these are trivial assumptions.

The first is pretty blatant nonsense. The second is something that I would be willing to bet money on. The third is not necessarily true: It might be the case that if there are more war criminals, they leave more evidence implicating each other, and picking up one end of the web and unravelling the whole thing might be easier. Or a larger number of war criminals might be indicative of a superior organisation, which might include better cutouts between individual members and better cover manoeuvres, which would make it harder.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 03:47:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Are there figures for local prosecutions? serbs brosecuted by serbia? bosnians by bosnia? croats by croatia?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 05:10:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
No, prosecutions within the ICCY framework.

So, actually, you can add an assumption to the list: That all countries have been equally unwilling and/or unable to prosecute their own war criminals - because ICCY only has jurisdiction when it is clear that the country of origin is not going to prosecute of its own volition.

But I think that's a pretty fair assumption, all things considered...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 05:33:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I knew that was the original state, but wondered wether there had been any shift since the process started.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 05:56:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
IANAL, but AFAIK that's still the case. It's a standard (and IMO very sensible) condition for international tribunals, so I very much doubt that it would be waived unless some of the countries in question tried to "acquit" "their" war criminals in outright kangaroo kourts.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 06:02:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Actually, those are not my assumptions - they're yours. You were the one who proposed and calculated that metric in the first place. IMHO, the other two measures you provided seem less adequate than the first.

I'm working on a statistical analysis which I'll share with you - whatever the results.

by vladimir on Sun Mar 15th, 2009 at 02:29:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, they are my assumptions, because so far DoDo and I are the only ones who have actually done any data analysis in this thread.

But that does not matter. The figure you used to state your case was based on those assumptions, no matter who came up with them. Which means that its validity is limited to the validity of those assumptions. I explicitly stated at the time that this was a ballpark figure, not a precise measure. And I used it only as a ballpark figure, not as a precise measure. So when you use it as if it were a precise measure, you're violating the assumptions that went into it.

In plain English: That number does not say what you seem to think it says. I should know; I built it.

I'd also like to know why the other two measures seem less adequate to you? That the number of war criminals is anti-correlated to the number of civilian casualties on your own side does not strike me as an unreasonable assumption - or at least not any less reasonable than to say that all sides are equally responsible for all the civilian casualties that are not from their own side.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Mar 15th, 2009 at 05:53:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
by vladimir on Sun Mar 15th, 2009 at 03:47:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Kosovo Accused's 40-year UN Conviction Overturned-EU Mission. Friday March 13rd, 2009 / 16h50

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AFP)--A European Union-led court in Kosovo has overturned a 40-year jail term U.N. judges gave an ethnic Albanian for a 2001 bomb attack on a bus that killed 11 Serbs, an E.U. mission said Friday.
"A Supreme Court panel of five judges - three EULEX and two local judges - ordered on the afternoon of March 12 the immediate release of Florim Ejupi from Dubrava prison," said the E.U. mission known as EULEX.
"He was acquitted of all charges and released for a lack of evidence," said EULEX, which in December replaced the U.N. mission that had administered Kosovo since its 1998-99 conflict.
Last year, a three-member panel of U.N. judges jailed Ejupi for 40 years over the attack on a bus carrying Serb pilgrims from Serbia to the enclave of Gracanica in central Kosovo for a commemoration service in February 2001.
Eleven passengers were killed and another 10 wounded in the incident, which occurred seven kilometers inside Kosovo, near the town of Podujevo.

by vladimir on Sat Mar 14th, 2009 at 02:31:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
vladimir:
I'll get you some figures on the indictments.
See Wikipedia's List of indictees of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
This is a complete listing of all indictees of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia along with their ethnic origin, rank or occupation, details of charges against them and the disposition of their cases. There are currently two indictees at large.


Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 11:13:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well done Migeru! I figured there'd be something available on Wikipedia, but I nevertheless contacted a friend who works at the tribunal.

I counted:

  • 100 Serbs
  • 29 Croat
  • 9 Albanian
  • 8 Bosnian Muslim
by vladimir on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:00:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
DoDo already linked to it when we were discussing your diary about Karadzic...

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:15:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
So taking those figures, we get

Serbian indictments vs. other people's dead civilians: 100/(4500+33000+2000+500) ~ 1/400

Serbian indictments times dead Serbian civilians: 100*(2300+3600) ~ 6*10^5

Croat indictments vs. other people's dead civilians: 29/(2300+33000+3600+500) ~ 1/1200

Croat indictments times dead Croat civilians: 29*(4500+2000) ~ 15*10^5

Bosnian indictments vs. other people's dead civilians: 8/(4500+2300+2000+500) ~ 1/1000

Bosnian indictments times dead Bosnian civilians: 8*33000 ~ 2.5*10^5

I'm not sure what to do with the Albanians, because I think they're from a separate, later round of wars.

Just from looking at these figures, you can see that they aren't conclusive (higher figures means greater likelihood of bias against that faction): By the first measure, Serbians get a short shrift, while Croatians appear favoured, but by the other measure, Croats get shafted and Bosniacs appear favoured. And all of these figures are well within an order of magnitude of each other, which is almost certainly an optimistic confidence interval for such a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:49:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Well, except for the indictees vs. other people's civilians measure, Bosniaks weren't involved in the slaughter in the War in Croatia, and Croats were responsible for the smaller part of that 33,000.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 02:51:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Sure, it's a just a ballpark figure, with some very, very crude assumptions.

But then, the only thing I was trying to establish with my little back-of-the-envelope calculation is that a 1:3 ratio between Serb and Croat indictees isn't completely outrageous when you look at the casualty figures.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 04:11:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Your indictees vs. other people's civilians figure maintained the 1:3 ratio :-)

Here is a comparison trying to accredit civilian deads, 'generously' assuming that 20% of the ethnic Bosniak (Muslim) civilian dead were killed by ethnic Croat militias and 80% by Serb ones (I suspect the ratio may be even more tilted), splitting Bosnian Serb civilian dead between Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims), and Bosnian Croat (Migeru's "Hercegovine") dead between Bosniaks (Muslims) and Serbs.

Serbian indictments vs. other people's dead civilians: 100/(4500+26400+500+950) = 1/323.5

Croat indictments vs. other people's dead civilians: 29/(2300+6600+1800) ~ 1/335

Bosnian indictments vs. other people's dead civilians: 8/(1800+950) ~ 1/340

Surprisingly close.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 05:17:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Your indictees vs. other people's civilians figure maintained the 1:3 ratio :-)

No, it demonstrated that the results were unstable by up to an order of magnitude (one favoured Serbians over Croats by half an order of magnitude, the other the other way round), depending on which metric one uses. Which means that, pending a more detailed analysis - which it wasn't my job to do, since I wasn't trying to prove anything - any ratio below an order of magnitude in difference is not inherently suspicious.

I used two simple metrics in order to get a ballpark figure for the sensitivity to choice between simple metrics, and demonstrate that Val's simple metric was well within the sensitivity to choice of metric.

I can't really comment on your analysis, because it uses assumptions derived from knowledge of the general sequence of events during the war, which I don't know anything about.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Mar 13th, 2009 at 11:04:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The Nuremberg trials were most prominently about the Holocaust and the killing of civilians. The number of civilians executed by the Allies pales in comparison with the number of civilians executed by the Axis.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:16:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]
OTOH, Nürnberg explicitly excluded terror bombing from the list of punishable offences, on the rather spurious grounds that the Allies did it too.

I'm not sure it changes that much, though. It takes a lot of powder to wipe out five to ten million civilians, particularly given that the Allied bombing runs were, shall we say, not precisely decisively effective until the last years of the war.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 12:53:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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