One down, with two more to go

Every major media outlet is now discussing the news that Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb wartime leader of the country's breakaway Serbian "republic" was apprehended on Monday night in Belgrade, after spending more than a decade living a life on the run.

There is plenty of sensationalism at work in much of the coverage; headlines identifying him as "the world's most wanted man" is rather pushing it, since no one spoke about him, or the Balkan region, for that matter, following the long and painful shadow that was 11 September 2001. Suddenly, Southeastern Europe stopped being so important, except for brief interludes in the form of elections, the formation of new states and the dissolution of old ones. Truth be told, however, is that this region is as significant for the EU as Iraq and the Middle East is for Washington. Regional and continental integration is incomplete without the Balkans.

Rumour even had it, or so I am told, that Richard Holbrooke, the former US diplomat that was involved in both the Dayton peace accords (which ended the war in Bosnia, thus shaping the nature of the country today) and the run-up to the Kosovo war in 1998-1999, had cut Karadzic some kind of a deal that stopped short at prosecution.

It comes at both a sad and optimistic time, as the thirteenth anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, in which Karadzic was allegedly complicit, is coming up. The Hague tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is nearing the end of its mandate, and its work is now all the closer to completion. There remain two more war criminals on the run, of whom General Ratko Mladic remains the 'big fish.' Is he next? I sure hope so.

Finally, the new Europeanist government in Belgrade is obviously trying to etch up its EU credentials, though it remains both bizarre and revealing that Karadzic was able to get into the country in the first place. Minus his longer hair and bushy beard, how did this happen, and why? The real revolution in Serbia shall not begin until this, and other questions, are satisfactorily answered.