Text: Jasmina Tešanović, June 19, 2006
Photos: Peace performance in Belgrade. Images courtesy Women in Black.

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Another one off to the Hague. One more of the last five indicted was arrested two days ago and delivered.

His name is Vlastimir Djordjevic and he is particularly famous for his efficiency in burying thousands of Albanian bodies in a secret mass grave just a dozen kilometers from the center of Belgrade.

The sinister designed efficiency has always puzzled me in the history of local warfare. We Serbs are a sloppy, easy going people, not to say boozy and work-shy. Besides, we lived for years on end under a communist regime with guaranteed salaries and social security, which much promoted our dolce far niente attitude. The Yugoslav army was big, like a second nation in a multiethnic nation.

Then all of a sudden the same placid army turns into a death squad which is second only to Nazis. The bodies were transported in big refrigerator trucks and buried all over Serbia.

The press here is discussing why the indicted was somehow arrested in Montenegro. Did he really work as a construction worker there? Supposedly, he hid safely for years in Russia -- did he have a Russian ID? Maybe he was posing as a stripper, as one commentator put it angrily...

As if those details mattered. What matters is that people in Serbia still don’t know, or want to know, why he was arrested or what he actually did.

People prefer to follow the glamorous doings of Arkan's widow, Ceca, who had a glorious evening in the local Russian embassy, surrounded by Radicals. Our President Kostunica put in an appearance, much cheered by Putin's support against Kosovo independence.

Putin' s growing economic power in the western world is costing Serbia its chance for integration into united Europe. Serbia geographically belongs there, and, with the exception of Russia, all the great powers would like to lock Serbia into Europe for good so it does not create yet more trouble.

The Russian myth dates to Tolstoy' s hero from Ana Karenina, who left his beloved to fight a gallant war for Serbia. Of course he was committing suicide by proxy as he did this, and eventually, she committed suicide too. These adventures rarely end well.

Back in 1999, Russians didn’t veto the bombing of Serbia. The Russians are using the Kosovo issue in order to reclaim ex- Soviet territories with Russian populations. Serbs know that the Russians have their own great-power motives in exploiting Serbian troubles, but the myth does not allow them to say that.

Ratko Mladic, the number one indicted in Hague, was supposedly in Russia only two days ago. With two out the last five major criminals gone, Mladic may yet be caught, maybe even in Belgrade, where his books and T-shirts are bestsellers.

The Serb authorities from Bosnia hailed the arrests and promised that soon their own land will be war-criminal free. The President of Serbia, Tadic, did the same.

Carla del Ponte praised the Serbian government in the UN assembly for the newly cooperative attitude.

What about the Russians?

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Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

- Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
- Mothers of Mass Graves
- Hope for Serbia
- Stelarc in Ritopek
- Sarajevo Mon Amour
- MBOs
- Killing Journalists
- Jasmina Tešanović: Where Did Our History Go?
- Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide
- Carnival of Ruritania
- "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
- Faking Bombings
- Dispatch from Amsterdam
- Where are your Americans now?
- Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
- Slaughter in the Monastery
- Mermaid's Trail
- A Burial in Srebenica
- Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
- To Hague, to Hague
- Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
- Floods and Bombs
- Scorpions Trial, April 13
- The Muslim Women 
- Belgrade: New Normality
- Serbia: An Underworld Journey
- Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
- The Long Goodbye
- Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
- Slobodan Milosevic Died
- Milosevic Funeral

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