Before Politics
Radovan Karadzic was born on June 18th 1945 to a Chetnik, the royalist group who were fighting both the fascist and the communist factions during World War Two. Despite the role he would later play in Bosnia, Karadzic was born in Montenegro. He studied medicine and became a doctor specialising in psychiatry. Two notable events during this period of his life involved being imprisoned for nearly a year for fraud involving government money before being found innocent, and writing and having published children’s books.The Wars of the Former Yugoslavia
In the late eighties Yugoslavia experienced rising nationalist tensions which began to pull the federation apart. In 1990 Karadzic helped create the Bosnian branch of the Serbian Democratic Party. He was their leader, and in 1992, after Bosnia declared itself independent, Karadzic declared himself president of a newly declared Bosnian Serb republic situated within Bosnia called Republika Srpska. This group was, at the start, closely allied to Serbia, which effectively ran what remained of Yugoslavia, including the military.With war raging in Bosnia between the various factions, Karadzic, supported by Serbian leader Milosevic, and working closely with Bosnian Serb military leaders like Ratko Mladic, authorised a campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to remove all non-Serbs from the Republika Srpska. Eviction, rape, murder and genocide became common, resulting – in 1995 – in Karadzic being indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Peace and Arrest
By 1995, Milosevic had seen a possible future and had turned against Karadzic, and the latter was strong-armed into agreeing peace and signing the Dayton Accords, although he was barred from attending the Dayton negotiations itself. This agreement left the Republika Srpska under a joint presidency with the new Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the Accords barred anyone charged with war crimes from taking part in the forthcoming elections, and so Karadzic had to stand down; he did so, after six years leading the party.At first Karadzic lived a normal life, but disappeared in 1997 when attempts to arrest him and take him to the International Criminal Court at the Hague stepped up. For many years he was missing, although he managed to publish a novel and work as an ‘alternative’ health practitioner. It’s believed that he was being protected by Serb nationalists, but in 2008, after pressure was placed on Serbia to find him before they could join the EU, he was arrested and put on trial.
