Ganic Arrest Shows That Serbia Remembers The Past, Too

A former senior Bosnian politician, Ejup Ganic, has been arrested at Heathrow Airport over alleged war crimes. A warrant for his extradition had been issued by Serbia, in relation to an attack on Yugoslav Army forces in Sarajevo at the start of the 1992-95 war. Mr Ganic has appeared in court, and it's now up to Serbia to produce evidence supporting its extradition request before anything more can happen.

First, the incident itself. Back in 1992, when Bosnia declared independence and was suddenly at war with what remained of Yugoslavia, one early problem was the presence of Yugoslav Army soldiers who had been based in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. A deal was agreed allowing them to be escorted out of the city by UN peacekeepers to a nearby Serb-controlled area. But hours before this was due to happen, rumours spread that the Bosnian Muslim political leader Alija Izetbegovic had been arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. Bosnian Muslims then ambushed the Yugoslav Army column on Sarajevo's Dobrovoljacka Street.

That much is more or less agreed on. But, as always when discussing the Balkan War, there are differences of opinion about the numbers. Serbia claims more than 40 soldiers were killed, the Bosnians say it was much less. Serbia also alleges that some of those dead soldiers had been wounded in the initial ambush, and were executed later. The charge facing Mr Ganic is that he helped organise this, something he denies. He's the most senior of 19 Bosnian officials who were recently charged by a Serbian court over the incident.

We don't know what evidence Serbia has got, so it's difficult to say whether Mr Ganic or anybody else will ever stand trial. But what we can say is that Serbia is doing its best to correct the record of history a bit. With the war crimes case against ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic resuming in The Hague today, Serbia is taking the opportunity to remind us that it wasn't the only side which did bad things during the war. Just as importantly, political and judicial leaders in Belgrade want to remind their own public that they've not forgotten about events which remain controversial and painful for many Serbs. Serbia is fed up being the villain.

Ireland Says Yes, And EU Expansion Could Follow

At the second time of asking, voters in Ireland have approved the EU's Lisbon Treaty. The treaty is supposed to make the EU run more smoothly, now that it has 27 members. Ireland is the only country which has held a referendum on the treaty, because the Irish constitution states that it has to. The treaty would probably be voted down if many other countries held similar polls, but that's not really important, because all the other EU governments are merely approving the treaty in their parliaments. That process should be complete by the end of this year.

One of the consequences of adopting the treaty is that the EU will expand further. The simpler decision-making processes that the treaty will introduce should make this traditionally tortuous process a bit easier. Countries keen to join as soon as possible include the next most likely entrant, Croatia, which is moving closer after apparently resolving a border dispute with Slovenia. After Croatia, there are other Balkan countries to consider, including Bosnia and Serbia.

For years it has seemed that those nations would ultimately be admitted into the EU once the remaining outstanding details of the 1992-95 war were resolved, such as the war criminals who remain at large. But both Bosnia and Serbia face considerable other problems. For Bosnia, the main issue is trying to get the two halves of the country (it was split into a Muslim-Croat part and a Serb part by the Dayton peace deal) to work together. After a series of disagreements between the two administrations, an international conference has been called for this Friday in Sarajevo to try to sort it out. Without political harmony across the whole of its territory, Bosnia's hopes of EU entry will remain distant.

Serbia's position is probably worse. Serb nationalism remains a potent and, in the west at least, a largely underestimated factor. There are still significant elements within Serbia which would rather the country was allied more closely with its traditional friend Russia than join the EU. Recent large-scale job losses have helped lead to dissatisfaction with the (still newish) pro-western and pro-EU government in Belgrade. Also, the recent cancellation of a planned gay pride event in fear of violence from right-wing groups has acted as a reminder that, socially, Serbia is not yet the sort of modern, forward-looking country the EU would like to welcome into the union.

There is a significant move forward coming up in January, though. Serbian citizens are expected to be given the right to travel to the rest of the EU without a visa, a privilege they last enjoyed when they were part of Yugoslavia. The fact that Serbs have not been allowed to move easily throughout Europe in recent years has helped stoke resentment against the EU. Removing that barrier could help make sure Serbia, and its people, see their future in Europe and not elsewhere.

Mladic Remains On The Run

Another anniversary has come and gone in Srebrenica. Fourteen years on from the massacre of around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, a ceremony has been held for more than 500 of the victims whose remains have recently been identified. But the man who commanded the Bosnian Serb forces who carried out the killings, General Ratko Mladic, is still at large.

The Mladic situation is a big problem for the Serbian government. Put simply, until he's in custody, they can't even talk to the EU about joining, and that's what Serbia and the Serbian economy badly needs. Nearby Slovenia, which was largely unaffected by the 1992-95 war, has been in the union since 2004. It has prospered, and people there earn roughly double their counterparts in Serbia. Croatia, having finally arrested all of its alleged war criminals, is about to join too. With an already strong tourism industry in that country, soon Serbia will be significantly worse off than most of its neighbours, and that's a big political problem for the Serbian government.

In the past, a mixture of Serb national pride and the legacy of wartime propaganda meant that Mladic and his fellow fugitives enjoyed considerable support form ordinary Serbian people. That has helped them stay in hiding, and made it politically difficult for past Serbian governments to arrest them. But as memories of the war fade, and the Serbian economy continues to fall behind other nations in the area, that support is ebbing away. The arrest of Mladic's old partner Radovan Karadzic passed without too much trouble. When the authorities finally catch up with Mladic, the same will surely be true. Ordinary Serbs now largely realise their future lies within the EU, not in the old world of Serb nationalism.

So if the political and public will in Serbia now exists to arrest Mladic, one problem remains. Actually finding him. The hills of western Serbia and the Serb-controlled part of eastern Bosnia contain plenty of remote hiding places. And General Mladic still has support among the men he used to command. So even if NATO or Serb forces find out where he's hiding, any military operation could finish in an horrific bloodbath halfway up a mountain, with a reasonable chance Mladic would be able to slip away. The most likely ways for the authorities to detain Mladic are either if they get lucky and literally just run into him one day, or if someone betrays him for reward money. Until that day, Serbia's dreams of joining the EU will remain as dreams.

The Deal?

Lawyers for the former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, say they will present evidence at his war crimes trial of a deal he allegedly struck with a top US diplomat. They want the charges against him thrown out on the basis of a promise, purportedly made in 1996 by the man who was America's peace envoy to the former Yugoslavia Richard Holbrooke, that Karadzic would be given immunity from prosecution. Karadzic has long claimed such a deal existed, and Holbrooke has always denied it, but now Karadzic's lawyers say they'll show us the evidence next week.

In one sense, this doesn't really matter. The lawyers want the charges thrown out because of this alleged deal, but the court has already said that, even if the deal did exist, it wouldn't be enough of a reason for the trial to collapse.

But there are two things to say about this. The first is that, if it turns out there really was a deal, it would be more than a little embarrassing for plenty of people back in Washington. That includes Bill Clinton, who would surely have known about such a promise, and Barack Obama, who recently appointed Mr Holbrooke as his special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's one thing to be a pragmatic diplomat and talk to your enemies, but quite another to tell someone who is probably responsible (at the very, very least indirectly) for the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people that he'll be in the clear if he keeps his head down.

That point presumes the evidence of this supposed deal is believable. But even if it's not, we're now getting a sense of how the Karadzic trial will play out. And it's starting to look suspiciously similar to the trial of the ex-Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. Over several years, there were delaying tactics, some grandstanding from the man himself, hundreds of witnesses and lots of evidence - yet not much that really firmly established his guilt. In the end, he died before the trial finished. There's no suggestion Karadzic's health is as bad as Milosevic's was, but it's fair to assume we're probably years away from reaching the end of this case.

Time Catches Up With Radovan Karadzic

One of the world's most wanted men has been caught. A terse statement from the Serbian government reveals that the wartime political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, is in custody after more than a decade as a war crimes fugitive. He's accused of orchestrating the genocide of Bosnian Muslims during the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, and ordering the killing of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo.

His capture at least partly ends a long-running embarrassment for both the Serbian government and the rest of the world. Serbia's faltering attempts to try to become a more normal country on the European and world stage have been badly affected by the fact Karadzic and his old crony Ratko Mladic have been on the run. Successive Serb politicians have been against trying too hard to arrest the pair, partly because they and the Serb nationalism they stood for are still popular among a lot of Serb people. That sticking point's made it difficult for the Serbs to try to rebuild the country, both politically and economically.

But things are a bit different now. The new Serb government has said it wants to solve the issue of war crimes fugitives. The main reason it wants to do this is so it can improve the country's relations with the rest of the world, meaning a better economy and progress towards joining the EU. Its neighbour Croatia is about to do so, having finally captured its last significant alleged war criminal Ante Gotovina in 2005. Slovenia is already in the EU, and as a result is already far wealthier than the other former members of Yugoslavia.

It's unlikely Serbia will be able to make similar progress until Mladic is also appearing before the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, but expect that to happen soon enough. It's taken 13 years since the end of the war, and eight since Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown, but Serbia's leaders are finally proving they really do want to take their country forward.

Trouble Ahead

A former rebel fighter has claimed victory in elections in Kosovo. Hashim Thaci's party seems likely to lead a grand coalition of Kosovar politicians, into a final showdown with Serbia over the future of the breakaway province. Next month, mediators are supposed to report on attempts to reach a compromise deal. With no sign of one, Mr Thaci says he'll declare independence anyway.

The long-running battle over Kosovo's future, with Serbia insisting it keeps control over the province, and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians demanding independence, has its roots much further back than the NATO war of 1999. In recent months, the Kosovo question's been fought on Cold War lines, with Serbia's traditional ally Russia threatening to use its veto at the UN to block independence.

But the talking can't go on forever, and with a worsening political crisis apparently just ahead, there's no doubt armed conflict is a possibility. If that wasn't bad enough, the prospect of the wider Balkans once again being engulfed in war is not totally unlikely. That's because, alnogside the Kosovo problem, Bosnia's currently in the midst of its worst political crisis since the 1995 peace deal brought years of bitter fighting to an overdue end.

The common factor in both crises is that Serbia feels its interests are under threat. Serbia's long-time goal in the area is to create a Greater Serbia - keeping hold of Kosovo and incorporating the Serb chunk of Bosnia into the country proper. It was this ambition that led to the war and ethnic cleansing of the 1990s. If Serbia believes it's being backed into a corner, its militia fighters may yet take up arms once again. There are already reports of the secret mustering of men in Bosnian Serb territory, and in a land where many still keep rifles in their attics, that's a very serious prospect.

EU peacekeeping forces are currently still in Bosnia, but their mandate runs out this week. It's not really clear whether they'll legally be able to stay or not. Clearly, the departure of international troops would be very badly timed, and could embolden any militia groups who are considering taking up arms. As things come to a head, it's up to diplomats in Europe and elsewhere to make the Balkans their top priority, to avoid another senseless and bloody war.

Carving Up Bosnia, Again

The Serb politician who held the rotating Prime Ministership of Bosnia has resigned. Nikola Spiric quit because the international diplomat who still runs the country (it used to be Paddy Ashdown, now it's a Slovak) went ahead with EU-backed efforts to change the way decisions are made there.

The reforms will restrict the number of ministers needed to take a decision. In practice, it means that none of the three ethnic groups involved in Bosnia's complicated government can scupper anything by simply walking out, as they can do at present. The Bosnian Serbs are worried the Bosniaks and Croats will gang up on them to pass laws they don't like, which is probably true enough. What's less clear is what can be done to solve the political crisis, arguably the worst since the end of the war 12 years ago.

When that conflict ended with the Dayton Peace Accords, the deal was criticised for rewarding Bosnian Serb aggression, by giving 49 percent of Bosnia's territory to a devolved Serb statelet, the Republika Srprska. Although technically still part of Bosnia, the RS is divided from the Bosniak-Croat 51 percent by barriers of culture, language, and population - Serbs from elsewhere in Bosnia moved to the RS, while Bosniaks and Croats living there headed out. Twelve years on, Bosnia is more ethnically divided now than it was at the end of the war.

And this helps explain why Mr Spiric resigned. What the Serbs wanted from the war in the first place was a so-called Greater Serbia, grafting the Serb-dominated bits of Bosnia on to the existing Serbia. That didn't happen, but the RS is the next best thing for them. And if political divisions within Bosnia get wider, the odds on the RS eventually breaking off to become part of Serbia grow shorter. Despite Srebrenica and everything else, the Serbs are edging closer to ultimate victory.

Drifting

The top international diplomat who runs Bosnia is stepping down. It had been hoped Christian Schwarz-Schilling would be the last foreign figure to take the role, effectively acting as an overlord to the Bosnian, Croat and Serb politicians who run the still bitterly divided country. But then, it had been hoped the man he replaced, Paddy Ashdown, would be the last too. Sadly, not enough progress has been made, and so a Slovak official's now going to do the job.

Although there's no danger of Bosnia slipping back into war, the huge animosity between the sides means it's difficult to see how things can improve enough to let them totally govern themselves. The wounds from the war of the 1990s are still wide open, and the three groups just hate each other too much to work together. The continuing doubts over whether Kosovo will become independent from Serbia simply adds to the somewhat uncertain future in the Balkans. We're now told full power will be returned to politicians in Bosnia by the middle of next year, but don't be surprised if it drifts still further.

Serbia Moves On

It's a good day for Serbia. Four ex-paramilitaries have been convicted of carrying out the killings of six Bosnian Muslims during the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995. It might not seem like much when set against the 8,000 or so Muslim men and boys who died at Srebrenica, but there are two things that are particularly significant about this case.

First is that the killings were filmed. While that made it easy to convict the four, the fact the tape has been widely played in Serbia in recent years has proved to disbelieving Serb civilians what the rest of the world already knew; that Serbs didn't just kill Muslims in the heat of battle, but sometimes lined them up and shot them down.

The other reason why this is such a big deal, is that the four were found guilty by a Serb court. This is the most serious case so far heard at the Serb war crimes court, which takes cases the big international tribunal in The Hague doesn't have time for. Even though the evidence was pretty overwhelming, it's still welcome to see the Serb system has at last moved on enough to find some of its own people guilty of taking part in Srebrenica. For Serbia, and Bosnia too, it's another step on the long road back from that hellish war.

The Trail's Gone Cold

Authorities in Montenegro spent the weekend talking to various members of the Karadzic family, amid rumours the fugitive Radovan Karadzic has been hiding out there lately. The former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs has been on the run for more than a decade, as has his military henchman Ratko Mladic. Despite being Europe's most wanted men, little's been heard of them in all that time.

It seems certain both are somewhere in either Serbia, Montenegro, or the Republika Srpska, which is the Serb bit of Bosnia. But a mixture of some of Europe's roughest terrain, fiercely loyal elements in the Serb military, and general incompetence and corruption among local officials, has made it easy for them to remain at large. But they'll be caught eventually, and it's the EU that holds the key to how quickly it'll happen.

The other Balkan countries are casting envious eyes at Slovenia, which was barely touched by the war and is firmly in the club these days. It's twice as prosperous as the rest of the former Yugoslavia, and proudly flies the EU flag from its embassies around the world. The other nations are still exhausted by the war, and need the prospect of EU entry to help them establish themselves. But Brussels rightly won't talk until all the war criminals are handed over. Croatia's government finally gave in 15 months ago, risking mass unpopularity with its people by giving up its most wanted fugitive, Ante Gotovina. A national hero for leading the Croats to victory over the Serbs in 1995, he's now answering questions about hundreds of dead Serb civilians. Croatia's reward is likely EU membership within two years, which will mean money, investment and lots more tourism on its Adriatic coast.

It's money and investment that's even more desperately needed in Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. But as long as politicians and police in each country think the capture of Karadzic and Mladic would make enough of the public angry, they won't try too hard to find them. That's why it's up to the EU to make a big show of twisting arms. It should do two things: first, set a deadline of later this year, and tell the three governments that if they're not in custody by then, talks on EU membership will be off the table for a generation; and also put up a much bigger cash reward for whoever hands them in, in the hope it'll persuade someone shielding them to finally betray them. Those two juicy carrots might just do the trick, but it's up to Brussels to make it happen.

Cleared

Serbia has been cleared by a UN court of being directly responsible for genocide in Bosnia during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. The judges decided that only the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, in which around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces, actually constituted an act of genocide. Although they did tell Serbia it failed in its responsibility to stop that massacre happening, their overall ruling means Bosnia won't get any compensation.

At first glance it looks like the wrong decision. Although politicians in Belgrade can't be blamed for all the actions on the ground of Bosnian Serb generals led by the (still on the run) Ratko Mladic, the idea they didn't know what was going on is nonsense. Right up to Serbia's then-President Slobodan Milosevic, the Belgrade government at the very least decided to turn a blind eye to the killing. On that basis, the court probably should have convicted Serbia.

But the judges' decision is actually pretty realistic. Raiding the Serb treasury to give money to Bosnia wouldn't do much good 12 years on. With corruption and confusion still common in the way Bosnia is run at local levels, a lot of the cash probably wouldn't get to the bereaved families anyway. Although finding Serbia guilty would have been symbolic, both Bosnia and Serbia need real progress rather than symbols. Offering both countries more hope of entry to the EU sooner rather than later is the best way to leave the dark days of the recent past behind.