After Mladic, the way is open

Serbian security forces have arrested Ratko Mladic at his cousin’s
house, in Lazarevo, a village close to Zrenjanin in northern Serbia.
More precisely, they arrested a citizen who presented himself as Milorad
Komadic — a detail that brings to mind the 2008 arrest of a certain
Dragan Dabic, better known under the name of Radovan Karadzic.

With this latest initiative, Serbia has turned an important page in
its history by separating itself – albeit slowly – from its warlike
past. It is a past that no longer has any legal political heirs, but one
which has claimed many victims and brought into existence a large
number of executioners. And in so doing, Serbia has also settled its
accounts with international justice.

As this macabre saga draws to a close, many questions remain
unanswered: Why did this story drag on for so long? Why was Mladic not
brought to The Hague years ago? Why did previous governments fail to
arrest him? And why did the “manhunt” or so-called “manhunt” always
remain two or three days behind this fugitive from justice?

Who were the people at the highest level of the state and the army
who helped Mladic for so many years? Will those responsible face
charges? Were certain state institutions aware of Mladic’s whereabouts
and thus engaged in secret bargaining and political calculations?

We might also wonder if there was any real political will to arrest
Mladic and bring him before the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)  in The Hague  during the mandate of previous
administrations, and in particular under the government of Vojislav
Kostunica — and if this absence of “political will” represented a
serious breach of the law, which should be the subject of criminal
charges.

These are legitmate and important questions to which the current
government will have to provide credible answers. That said, what’s
important today is the initiative that brought an end to a long drawn
out manhunt, an initiative that has provided Serbia with a major
opportunity to escape a vicious circle.

It would be too easy if Mladic and Hadzic [the latest fugitive, who
is also accused of war crimes] were the sole obstacle to Serbian
accession to Euro-Atlantic institutions. But if this problem is not
solved, there will be no substantial progress in this regard, all the
more so in the context of a government policy on Kosovo that is once
again in direct contradiction to the Serbia’s desire to join the
European Union.

In any case, human nature is such that the errors of the past are
quickly forgotten in the context of present day successes. In putting an
end to Mladic’s flight from justice, President Boris Tadic and his
coalition [led by the Democratic Party] have shown their determination
to definitively turn over a new leaf. His arrest will also be a blow for
the nationalist right, which will certainly protest against it. There
will be a few demonstrations, but the story will stop there because
Serbia no longer has political forces with the capacity to bring out the
crowds for a “Serbian hero” like Mladic.

Let’s not forget that Karadzic was arrested on the eve of a split in
the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party. The new nationalist
formation that resulted from this split, the Serbian Progressive Party,
has flirted with pro-European ideas, albeit in a contradictory and
haphazard manner, but to an extent that will preclude any desire for a
confrontation with the international justice system.

Mladic’s arrest will also reinforce Serbia’s position in a region
where its inability – or its reluctance – to respect its commitment to
international justice was the country’s Achilles heel and an ideal
pretext for its neighbours who also failed in this regard. Today, this
issue has been resolved, and Serbia has almost reached a point where the
1990s have been set aside. I say “almost”, because only a definitive
solution to the problem of Kosovo will put an end to that nightmare. The
current government will miss out on a historic opportunity if it fails
to steer Serbia out of this political rut. It is time to seize the day.