Serbia's arresting development
The nation takes a step into the future with the apprehension of Karadzic.
After 13 years of fulsome denials, false starts and broken promises, Serbia's new leaders have finally taken the step they said was impossible. On Monday, police arrested Radovan Karadzic, one of the remaining marquee fugitives indicted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
In 1990, when I was a reporter covering Yugoslavia, Karadzic seemed a reluctant politician. He'd been a psychiatrist with a great wit and had a penchant for reciting his own epic poetry. As Bosnia slid inexorably toward war over the next two years, Karadzic was transformed. Sitting in the Hotel Panorama one night, Karadzic bragged that he had just issued his own currency and signed his name for me on a newly minted bill. The idea that his state, whose capitol was a ski chalet, would have its own currency seemed preposterous. From his face, however, I saw that this was no joke.
Karadzic's arrest cannot -- and should not -- be underplayed. More than just the closing of a chapter of bloody history, it is a signal about the future. The newly formed government in Belgrade is demonstrating that it is serious about bringing Serbia into the European fold.
Likewise, when I was in Belgrade just a few weeks ago, it was clear how badly Serbia wants a fresh start with the U.S. as well. Graffiti scrawled on walls read: "Barack Obama -- always be with us." The main newspaper is serializing Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."
It's a long way from the early '90s, when Karadzic was the paramount political leader of the Bosnian Serbs and, along with Croatian leaders, tried to militarily partition Bosnia-Herzegovina's territory and create ethnically pure states. Karadzic oversaw the decision-making that displaced 1.5 million people across huge swathes of Bosnia-Herzegovina beginning in late March 1992. They used overwhelming firepower to remove Muslims and members of other minority groups from towns and villages, executing as many of the men as possible and sending away the women, children and old people in buses, cars and trains.
Karadzic presided over the years of terror in Sarajevo, when Serbian bombardments destroyed crowded neighborhoods and Serbian sniper attacks targeted people crossing streets. Under his watch, there were the rape camps, where sexual assault was the weapon of choice. Then came the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, a mining town in eastern Bosnia packed with 40,000 Muslims, mostly refugees who were supposed to have been under U.N. protection. Karadzic and the Bosnian Serbs' top military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, launched an attack on Srebrenica and then executed about 8,000 Muslim men and boys who had been taken captive, blindfolded and their hands bound in wire ligatures.
