The Serbian president has shown he is a man of deeds as well as words in righting past wrongs. He deserves our respect
It was fitting that Serbia's president, Boris Tadić, himself announced the arrest of Ratko Mladić in Belgrade. Nobody has put in a greater effort to run down the indicted war crimes suspect than Tadić. For years, foreign governments and, above all, the chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal, have accused him of not having done enough to find the former Bosnian Serb general. They implied that Tadić was frightened that a nationalist backlash in the event of Mladić being arrested might even lead to the toppling of his government.
His own prime minister Vojislav Kostunica – until he left office in 2008 – systematically dragged his feet during the hunt for Mladić, and some diplomats suspected he hindered the investigation. Tadić, by contrast, placed the capture of Mladić at the top of his political agenda from the moment he was elected president in 2004. He knew full well that until that happened, Serbia's aspiration to join the EU would be blocked.
In his previous incarnation as minister of defence, Tadić had undertaken a root-and-branch reform of the Serbian military, which included breaking up the military intelligence operatives suspected of forming the backbone of Mladić's supporters when he went into hiding. Tadić also oversaw the reform of Serbia's domestic intelligence service, bringing in younger agents who were less susceptible to the old yet hugely powerful secret police network built up under communism before the break-up of Yugoslavia.
While in public, western governments have criticised Tadić for not doing enough on Mladić, and maintained debilitating sanctions at the request of the Hague tribunal, behind the scenes Tadić permitted an unprecedented level of co-operation between his security forces and western intelligence agents. Their number one goal was to find and extradite Mladić.
Like his friend, and sometime mentor, Zoran Djindjic – the reforming Serbian prime minister assassinated by dissident nationalist paramilitaries in 2003 – Tadić's greatest asset has been his determination to face down conservative and nationalist forces who threaten disruption. The president had witnessed how the earlier arrests and extradition to the Hague of the toppled Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, and the Bosnian Serb military leader, Radovan Karadzic, had not triggered a nationalist revolt. Serbs merely shrugged their shoulders.
It was often argued that Mladić was different and that, as a military man, he would act as a more powerful magnet to the malcontents in Serbia ready to exploit the widespread disaffection resulting from the current economic crisis. That is almost certainly not going to happen. It is undoubtedly true that many Serbs are still convinced that the west has singled out Serbia for special punishment in the wake of the conflict of the 1990s. But they are not going to sacrifice the benefits that they will accrue from EU membership out of spite. Most Serbs inside Serbia are no longer interested in the fate of Mladić; possibly they never were. The pull of the EU long ago trumped the mystique surrounding the wartime leader.
Furthermore, enough has now been published and broadcast in Serbia for people to realise that Mladić was not the knight in shining armour many once thought he was. The first chink had appeared a year before the notorious massacre at Srebrenica, when his daughter, Ana – seemingly distraught at her father's growing reputation as a mass murderer – committed suicide in Belgrade.
It is again thanks to Tadić that the revelations about Mladić's psychopathic tendencies have been properly aired in Serbia. He has taken the lead in denouncing the bloody crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb forces as well as atrocities such as the mass killing at Ovcara in Croatia and the siege of Vukovar. He has bowed down and sought forgiveness for these events on behalf of Serbia.
These courageous acts have received little media attention outside the former Yugoslavia. But the arrest of Mladić is the final proof that Tadić is a man of deeds as well as words.
Most of the obstacles blocking Serbia's path to EU membership will now be lifted. But this does not mean that peace and harmony are about to break out in the region. Serbia continues to face one huge, unresolved issue – the constitutional mess surrounding Kosovo, which has been recognised as independent by most EU countries but which Serbia and one or two allies refuse to accept. Although Serbia and Kosovo are engaged in exploratory talks to overcome these difficulties, at the moment the two sides seem to be extremely far apart.
But that is overwhelmingly a political issue. What Boris Tadić has done with Mladić is to take a huge step towards the moral rehabilitation of Serbs and Serbia whose reputation was so catastrophically compromised by the wars of the 1990s. He deserves our support and respect.