Back in the Saddle

Stephanie and I have been tearing up the town, and understandably blogging hasn't been foremost on my mind. Still, I have an obligation to my fan base. I missed all of you. I hope it hasn't been hard.

As a light taste of what you wish you'd had more of the last few weeks, here's a morsel: pressure to catch Ratko Mladic, the Serbian wartime military leader who did Milosevic's dirty work in the Balkans, is always on the rise, with occasional reports of his imminent capture (I noted one a few months ago myself; nothing came of it), but there's never any similar talk about Radovan Karadzic, the political head of the Bosnian Serb entity that turned on its ethnic minorities.

Hardly a week goes by without The Hague tribunal, the European Union or Washington telling Belgrade that Mladic is in Serbia protected by loyalist military officers and needs to be extradited in order for Serbia to avoid sanctions and isolation.

"Maybe he (Karadzic) has managed to hide himself better then Mladic," says Antonio Prlenda of Sarajevo's Oslobodjenje daily. "They don't seem to have a clue where he is at all."

Analysts say NATO peacekeepers and local authorities may not have the will or ability to break Karadzic's support network, or perhaps the West feels Mladic is politically more urgent.

If anything, though, Karadzic is the bigger target. (Would you rather nab Saddam Hussein or Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri? Don't know who he is? There you have it.) It's always surprised me, and probably other armchair war crimes dilettantes out there, that Karadzic gets off the hook. Go read it. I'll be back with more later.