JUDICIAL POLITICS AND THE BALKANS WARS

Abstract

What distinguishes legitimate military engagements from war crimes? This is not an easy question to answer. The mere fact that civilians are killed is not in itself sufficient. Every war involves the death of innocent people. Does it matter how many civilians die? In Operation Storm, the Croatian-American joint military action to expel the entire Serb population of Krajina in August 1995, up to 2,000 people were killed (no exact casualty figures exist). Was this a justified loss of life, given the military aims involved? In its judgment on 16 November 2012, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) ruled that it was. The mourning families of the dead must find solace in the fact that the murder of their relatives was a tolerable incidental consequence of appropriate military action.