Radovan Karadzic was arrested at the weekend – a great day for justice but a bad day for beards. Check out one of the most bizarre before and after shots ever:
Recent posts have exposed me as a big fan of the taste of “international justice” and Karadzic’s arrest fits right into my pot. The destabilising effects predicted by critics of the indictment of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan are minimal in this case; thanks to the passage of time, the Karadzic arrest is unlikely to be much more than another arrow in the political quiver of a particular section of Serbian politics, rather than a focus for mass mobilisation.
The news is more interesting in terms of the timing – shortly after the formation of the new Serbian government and the replacement of Bulatovic as the head of the intelligence services. Karadzic is just a pawn in the chess game of Serbia’s political rehabilitation, which is perhaps the hardest thing for his supporters – and him – to stomach. That’s perhaps part of the role of tribunals such as ICTY – not just providing justice, but also showing people that their “heroes” have feet of clay and their “monsters” are (in the end) a sad old man with a novelty beard.
However the most important aspect of this news is that Karadzic – under his pseudonym of Dr Dragan Dabic – had his own website, which I urge you to visit at http://dragandabic.com/. Turns out that the initial website that circulated via such illuminated truthseekers such as the BBC and Reuters was a spoof - Dabic’s real website was the New Age car crash PSY Help Energy. In spite of that, I still found the homilies at the bottom of the spoof page quite entertaining, this one was particularly poignant in light of his history of hair:
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
He’ll have plenty of time to reflect on that in the next few years, and possibly to face in court some of the people from Bosnia who had very little choice about where the birds of sorrow built their nests.
POSTSCRIPT: In other news, Karadzic was my neighbour! Human Quantum Energy! Also smuggles endangered animals (in hat)! Ratko to go down swinging!