SREBRENICA, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA — The legacy of Radovan Karadzic is etched here in unsmiling, mistrustful faces; on tombstones that march shoulder to shoulder for nearly a quarter-mile; in empty, scarred houses whose owners never returned.
Karadzic's Bosnian Serb army rounded up thousands of Muslims living or sheltering in Srebrenica on a sweltering July day 13 years ago and separated males from the women. Most of the more than 7,000 men and boys were killed, their bodies dumped in mass graves or scattered in the thickly forested hills.
Srebrenica stands as the deadliest atrocity in Europe since World War II, and is the single most egregious war crime for which Karadzic has been indicted by the international tribunal in The Hague. Arrested this week after more than a decade in hiding, he is expected to be sent to the court in the Netherlands within days.
Today, Srebrenica shows small signs of recovery. Though the town sits in the middle of Bosnian Serb territory, several thousand Muslims have returned; the mayor is a Muslim, as are other city officials. But the death and destruction allegedly wrought by Karadzic's design left an enduring trauma.
As in much of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the prewar coexistence that Karadzic sought to wipe out has not been revived, and may never be.
"I'd say [Serbs and Muslims] are living parallel lives," Mayor Abdurahman Malkic said Wednesday in an interview at City Hall. "Maybe one day we will be a mixed community again, but I think that would be in the very distant future, unfortunately."
The capture of Karadzic, Malkic said, was bittersweet: excellent news that will "take us closer to the truth and to justice," but painfully long overdue.
Srebrenica operates under an unwritten code of ethnic politics and socialization. Muslim-owned coffee bars bear signs in green lettering over umbrellas advertising Sarajevo mineral water; the signage on Serb-owned businesses is more likely to be written in Cyrillic letters. Most (but not all) of the patronage is along ethnic lines.
Contact between Muslims and Serbs is largely superficial, the necessities of commerce, and there are no deep ties. Although there are no overt hostilities, several townspeople said, there is disdain.
"As a Serb you cannot go to their cafes," said Momir Djokanovic, 46, who was sitting with a rather forlorn group of Bosnian Serb pensioners having their morning coffee and brandy on the terrace of a community center.
