For the effective prosecution of war crimes to become more than a daydream of do-gooders, some method must eventually be found to arrest these men and put them on trial. The consequences of indicting them as a mere formality, and then allowing them to continue their criminal careers unchecked, could be worse than if they were never indicted at all, particularly in the Balkans.

Such half-measures risk bringing the ideal of international justice into disrepute. Unfortunately, NATO has failed to enforce the warrants for Karadzic and Mladic, and is presently unable to do so in the case of Milosevic. But there is another way to nab these swaggering perps.

Put a price on their heads.

Not just their heads, actually, but their entire persons. They must be captured alive so that they can be tried. That condition cannot be overemphasized. "Bring me the head of Slobodan Milosevic" isn't meant to be taken literally (it's just a nostalgic reference to the Peckinpah movie from the '70s, "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.") Milosevic's corpse would be worth less than nothing to the cause of justice.

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Brought in alive, however, he would be worth a great deal. The idea is that national governments -- or, if that seems diplomatically unwieldy, private organizations or even civic-minded world citizens -- should offer a reward for the delivery of Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic into custody of the international authorities, anywhere outside the borders of the former Yugoslavia. A price of $1 million apiece could be established, and raised annually until someone with sufficient courage, initiative and greed fulfilled the bargain.

If this notion sounds as loony as Bill Safire debating with his dog, it isn't. The other day I made the same suggestion to a high-ranking and vastly experienced official of a major human rights organization, who found it both plausible and intriguing. He told me it would be easy to raise $1 million privately for this purpose. The problem, of course, is who's going to do it?

It isn't the sort of proposal that could survive a veto in the United Nations Security Council. The Russians and the Chinese would surely make trouble if NATO offered a bounty for their buddy in Belgrade. Private human rights groups and wealthy individuals would rightly fear harsh reprisals if they did it. But someone just might come up with the money one of these days -- and that is when Milosevic will start looking over his shoulder and wondering which of his bodyguards is planning to truss him up and turn him in.
salon.com | June 15, 1999

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