What a week it’s been for – if not in – the Balkans. As usual in this foreign-managed land, decisions and events that happen far away have their own resonance and ramifications here.

Most sensational was when the Spanish police swooped down on Croatian war crimes suspect and fugitive Ante Gotovina, as he dined with a friend in the Canary Islands.

The Spanish carted him off to the Hague and the Croatian government was able to take a huge exhalation of relief that someone else had done this unpleasant work for them. Indeed, the “national hero” who proclaimed his innocence before the court was celebrated in street protests in Croatia, and his fateful final dining companion is said to be in hiding, pegged as a traitor to the national cause. Someone is bound to get capped for this one, no doubt.

The surprise capture succeeded in removing the pressure from the Croats and shifting it back – as if it had ever been lifted – on the Serbs. But the continuing drone of Western threats over alleged Serbian non-compliance with the court are getting more farcical than usual, considering Serbia’s energetic sentencing of 14 former paramilitaries over Vukovar, and – much more repugnant – the court’s release two weeks agoof two of the very few Kosovo Albanians to have ever come before the court. And, while Slobo and Seselj, those geriatric “flight risks,” continue to fester in jail, good old Ramush is living it up in Kosovo, where surprisingly enough potential witnesses are not long for this world.

The farce grew to frighteningly absurd proportions this week when it was reported that former NLA thugs Ali Ahmeti, his uncle Fazli Veliu and Gzim Ostreni – after having gotten off the Hague’s hook themselves – will appear as witnesses against Ljube Boskovski and Johan Tarculovski.

With each passing day, the Hague succeeds only in making itself more and more ridiculous. When those who have sacrificed their lives (in some case, literally) by working for it someday look back on their colossal waste of time and energy, one imagines that the feelng of emptiness that can only be appeased by narcotics or suicide can’t be far behind. They lived… for what?

Same goes for our fond friends in the ICG, that truly reprehensible body of self-appointed experts whose adjectives are as predictable as their arrogance: when it’s time for the latest paean to Montenegrin independence, for example, we know in advance that “still-dangerous nationalist forces” must refer to Serbia and that “dysfunctional” will refer to the state of the union. And just try to guess who “has taken major steps” and “has formed a genuinely multi-ethnic government…” Those Belgian cubicles must be grim indeed.

It is sometimes said that the Balkans kills those who can’t escape it. But it can’t kill those who were already dead to begin with.

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Not to be a bore, but I have bene told there was a broken link, a kind of important one, in this article… so if you couldn’t compare the texts specified, give it another try. Oh, and don’t forget about those Balkan Christmas books…

Finally, for a little Balkan comic relief, click here.