That the news which arrived on the evening of 21 July 2008 should be welcomed needs little further elaboration. Karadzic was the figurehead of a Bosnian Serb breakaway statelet (the Republika Srpska) within Bosnia-Herzegovina, which itself broke away from Yugoslavia in 1992 - contrary to the wishes of most of its Serbs, who formed around one-third of the republic's population. The "wars of Yugoslav succession" were bloody, but nowhere more so than in Bosnia and nowhere in Bosnia more than in areas controlled by Bosnian Serbs. The ethnic cleansing and massacres of eastern Bosnian Muslims and the shelling of Sarajevo in the first half of the 1990s were among the final dark chapters of Europe's violent century.
Together with general Ratko Mladic - the Bosnian Serb military commander still at large - Karadzic is alleged to have been responsible for some of the worst crimes committed in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. His likely trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague will in principle mean both that justice will be served, and that further light will be shed on the regional and international dimensions of the Bosnian war. It may even lead to Mladic, if he is not arrested before the start of the trial, himself being captured.
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9:37 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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