Arresting Mladic is all about Serbia's EU agenda
The past has a funny way of coming back to bite you. Wars and crises that once seemed all-important fade into the background and then, out of nowhere, they return centre-stage. The arrest of Ratko Mladic is a long drawn-out postscript to one of the grisliest conflicts in recent memory. Remember Bosnia? We do now.
General Mladic was, of course, best known for presiding over the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, 16 years ago. Just after it happened, I was in Tuzla, in central Bosnia, and spoke to a survivor. He was that rarity, a man from the town where no men survived.
He had done so by hiding in the drains during the killings and he emerged only when they were over and the town was quiet. He made his way with enormous difficulty to safety outside.
At one point, trying to make his way through a stream, he almost set off a trip wire that was positioned across the water, presumably to catch fugitives: it was like something out of John Buchan, in a bad way. There were piles of bodies in Srebrenica, he said; the ones that didn't get away.
It's good that the man who before that massacre promised his soldiers that they would drink blood - a promise he fulfilled - will face justice, if he's well enough. There are still Bosnian Serbs, including the prime minister of the Serb Republic, Milorad Dodik, who hanker after Mladic's aim of independence from the Bosnian state - and he has tacit support in Belgrade - but that agenda isn't going anywhere soon.
Granted, Europe's bad conscience about Srebrenica - the British-led arms embargo actually handicapped the wrong side - had problematic consequences. It led to Tony Blair's willingness to intervene in Kosovo and after his success there, he was emboldened to become involved in Iraq. All right, liberal intervention looks less good, post-Iraq. But non-intervention, as in Srebrenica, where Dutch peacekeepers allowed the Serbs to overrun a UN safe haven didn't feel good at the time either.
But this arrest - it's a little after time, wouldn't you say? This is a man whose life as a fugitive involved surfacing at celebrations and anniversary commemorations in Serbia and reputedly at his son's wedding. He was captured without much fuss at his cousin's house in northern Serbia where, apparently he lived for some time.
He could have been brought to justice before now, even given his protection from former military comrades. As Serb president Boris Tadic said, this arrest closes a difficult chapter in Serbian history. Yet it doesn't take a peculiarly Balkan cynicism to see a connection between Mladic's arrest and Serbia's bid to be accepted as a candidate for EU membership.
A report on the extent of Serbia's co-operation with the Hague international court was due to be filed next month, and it wasn't looking good until now. With this arrest, the way is clear for Serbia to take her place in Europe, and that's all to the good.
In fact, this looks like a triumph for those EU states - the Dutch and the Irish - who stubbornly insisted that Serbia would have to deliver Mladic, and co-operate with the tribunal, in order to be accepted as a candidate EU nation. That insistence paid off. Good for them.
