Kosovo Special Tribunal in The Hague: Justice a little later

T he unspeakable legacy of the Yugoslavia wars continues to have an impact today; there can be no question of coming to terms with the past. This was observed at the end of August with the death of the former Bosnian Serb general and convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić.

Thousands of Serbs paid homage to their “hero”. The Serbian Orthodox Church also blessed its deserving “warrior of God,” which even led to political upheaval in neighboring Montenegro. Mind you: Mladić is responsible for the massacre in Srebrenica in 1995 with over 8,000 deaths, while Serbia, under the rabid head of state Aleksandar Vučić, is waiting to join the EU. Does that fit together? Hardly.

The verdict of the Hague Kosovo Special Court on Wednesday is unlikely to promote dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo at the moment, but rather will further divide and polarize. Hashim Thaçi, ex-president of Kosovo and a welcome guest of Western politicians, as well as three former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army KLA were sentenced in the first instance to long prison sentences for war crimes. Many Albanians, not only in Kosovo, are foaming at the mouth - quite a few of them feel exclusively as victims of the nationalist repression machine of Slobodan Milošević.

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But there is no such thing as a “clean” war, but there are perpetrators and victims on both sides. And as we all know, it is always the civilian population who pays the highest price. The court's task was to examine whether and what crimes Thaçi and his three co-defendants were guilty of.

Serbs who have lost relatives or whose fate is still unclear even after decades are likely to interpret the verdicts as a measure of justice that has been bestowed on them. This could perhaps be a glimmer of hope for the future: there are already - albeit few - representatives from both sides working on reconciliation. But the way there will be painful and very, very long.