Bagging The Butcher

When the end came, in the cool dawn of a Serbian spring, it came quickly. Four, five shots in the gathering light. A convoy rushing past the gates of the white fortress where Slobodan Milosevic had retreated since his ouster from power last fall. And it was over. Milosevic, the man who had terrorized the turbulent Balkans for a decade, was wrapped in the arms of the law. It was a victory for so many things. A victory for the idea that it was possible to pressure nations into democracy. A win for those Serbs who had fought to make Milosevic go. Here, finally, a monster was subdued. There were shivers in that Serbian dawn last Sunday when the police jammed their way into Milosevic's house. But not all the shivers came from the cold.

To understand the strands of guilt that eventually bound him into a web from which he could not escape, it is necessary to recount his crimes. He was a man who levered his way from small-time communist hack to political power by tapping into the most potent vein of historical juice in the Balkans: nationalism. Elected President of Serbia in 1990, he set out to unify the odd and unstable jumble of nationalities that crowd the Balkan peninsula--not by propagating a compelling vision for the future but by broadcasting a kind of radiant hate that warmed some Serbian hearts and, by reflection, brought out the worst in some Croats, Muslims and others eager to defend themselves from his baleful ambitions. In four wars, he fought to expand his control beyond Serbia. In the end, he oversaw the rape of thousands, the murder of tens of thousands and the death of millions of hopes.

The fate he is likely to face may be a kind of compromise. Instead of a trip to the Hague on war-crimes charges, he may only face domestic courts on counts of stealing money from the government and resisting arrest. He will face his accusers, be judged and serve his time, if convicted, in a Serbian jail.

For a couple of days at the start of last weekend, it looked as if even jail might be out of the question. The quandary of whether to arrest Milosevic, 59, had been haunting the new Serbian government of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and President Vojislav Kostunica. Their arrival in power last fall, spurred by a popular revolt against Milosevic's final attempt to steal a presidential election, was not a complete clean slate. Both men are reluctant to send Milosevic and other indicted war criminals to the Hague. Both men too had troubling records of their own. Kostunica, hailed as an improvement on Milosevic, was seen in in 1998 before the election waving an AK-47 in Kosovo with an eerie glee. An improvement over Milosevic, perhaps, but the West was uncertain how much of one he represented.

So one of the top U.S. and European demands on the new Serbian leaders was for a sign that the bad old regime would be held accountable. To let men like Milosevic--or the officers around him who had been indicted by the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague--walk away from their crimes would tarnish the hard-won idea of international accountability. Last fall, even as the White House celebrated Milosevic's defeat, Washington sent a carrot-and-stick signal to Belgrade: Milosevic must be arrested by March 31 or millions in U.S. aid would be frozen, along with a big piece of U.S. goodwill. But in the past weeks the White House gave the Serbs some wiggle room. It wasn't necessary that Milosevic be sent to the Hague, simply that he be arrested as a start.

So last Friday night, the rumors of an imminent arrest began seeping out of Serbia. At about 2:30 the next morning, a white van loaded with special police units in stocking masks and jeans roared up to the leafy compound where the ex-strongman had been holed up since last fall. Hurling stun grenades, they burst past a knot of angry loyalists singing patriotic songs and vaulted the iron gates. (The Serbian army, which once strongly backed Milosevic, remained in its barracks.)

As in earlier confrontations, Milosevic put up a fight. This time the resistance resembled a gangster shoot-out, not a military standoff. An estimated 20 supporters, and a well-armed and reportedly well-lubricated bodyguard fired back at police, injuring two officers and forcing the raid back. Milosevic tried to put a smooth face on the affair by telling a local TV station he was relaxing with "comrades" and sipping coffee. Nothing, it seemed, could shake his expert skills as a liar. Later, seeming more desperate, he vowed to a police commander that he would not be taken alive. Another fib.

For a brief moment, it looked like a bad hostage standoff, the cheap fare of Southern California TV, was about to be played out in the Balkans. All day on Saturday, Milosevic and his minions remained squirreled away as the government formulated a plan and as TV cameras watched from a distance. In that vacuum, events spilled easily into farce. Loyalists, mostly elderly socialists for whom Milosevic represents patriotic Serbian ideals, built themselves a bonfire to ward off the chill, scrawling the names of their imagined enemies--Solana (Javier, the NATO Secretary-General), Klark (Wesley Clark, the retired U.S. general) and Monika (Lewinsky, presumably)--on logs before hurling them into the blaze. The supporters "love him with their heart and soul, not with Western money like these new leaders," hissed a spokeswoman--dressed in leopard coat and tight jeans--for Milosevic's wife.