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Arkan was in it for the money. Another unindicted militia leader, Dragoslav Bokan, sought to satisfy his dreams of political power. Bokan is the organizer and commander of the White Eagles, a third important paramilitary group. The pudgy, 35-year-old film critic comes across as a rather unusual war-crimes suspect. He can be found preening amid the expensive '20s-style bric-a-brac in his brand-new Belgrade cafe, which he has named the Lexington, he chuckles, in honor of the Chicago hotel favored by Al Capone.
In hours of nonstop talk, Bokan plays emotional riffs on the injustices Serbs have suffered, even as he mocks himself as "the rock-'n'-roll war criminal." He says the conduct of the war was a question of "political strategy not passion," but keeps recalling that "my family was butchered by the Croats 50 years ago." Serb nationalism harmlessly "exhausts itself in talk," he says, but he went to the front "because we are what we do."
Bokan was, by his own account, one of the seminal propagandists of the war, a voice who made it respectable for young Serbs to act on their worst beliefs, and a highly effective recruiter of "volunteers.'' Human-rights investigators say Bokan was more. He allegedly oversaw the decimation of Vocin and of Lovas, near Vukovar, where Croats were made to march through minefields and gunned down if they refused.
By turns self-deprecating and self-promoting, Bokan gets tangled up boasting of his starring role in the field while denying command responsibility for indictable crimes. He is full of nationalist justification, like Seselj, but gives prominence to his own brilliance. "People accuse me because of my high profile," he says, "because I am such a gifted speaker." Eager young Serbs flocked to his words, he says, and virtually forced him into forming the White Eagles, "a legally registered organization, nothing like those other paramilitary animals," so they could serve together. Bokan felt it was his moral duty to accompany them to the front lines. "The media loved my unusual personality so they focused on me as commander," he says, "but I went not to fight but as a brother, priest, teacher. I was their moral commissar." He pauses to admire this locution. "I exerted real influence," he says, "not military leadership but bigger than that."
Bokan is hurt that he is not enjoying the same adulation--and wealth--as Arkan. "The government never paid me," he complains, "never cut me in on the loot. I got no medals, not even a TV talk-show appearance. I'm surrounded by people who think I'm a homicidal maniac and want to see me delivered to the Hague. If you knew the extent of my solitude, you'd be shocked." Underneath the bombast and bathos, though, Bokan is afraid he will be sacrificed to the Hague by Milosevic because, unlike Seselj, he does not claim to have evidence that could fix the blame higher up. "I'd be an ideal scapegoat," he says, "because they'd get rid of a powerful troublemaker." Then he reverses course again. "All I care is how much can I use my influence with the young to inspire future Serb generations. I'm not afraid. The only court I respect is the court of Last Judgment."