We woke up 10 days ago to the startling sight of the silver bearded pony-tailed Dr Dabić, New Belgrade alternative health practitioner, being paraded before the television cameras with claims that this was none other than the War Crimes Tribunal fugitive Radovan Karadžić. And so it turns out. The political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, along with his military commander and close ally General Ratko Mladić, disappeared more than a decade ago· As Slavenka Drakulić, who wrote about war criminals at The Hague in They Would Never Hurt a Fly, put it “they waited for the right time to pick him up like a ripe fruit.” The implication is that Karadžić sympathisers within the Serbian security services protected him and are still protecting Mladić. To Westerners it is obvious. The sooner Mladić and others of all nationalities indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal are brought before this international court, the better. To those who lived within the maelstrom of the civil wars that surrounded the breakup of Yugoslavia it is not so simple. And I have made an immediate mistake. It isn't just those who lived through it, but a whole younger generation is marked by it, even those who were too young to remember it, and those who lived far from the fighting and ethnic cleansing.
I was talking to a 16 year old about the news, and it was a sadly familiar theme. He threw end to end a whole series of incredible reasons why the Yugoslav civil wars happened; wait for it. “American ambitions to build Balkan bases, American oil grabs, an American-Albanian conspiracy, American need to test new weapons etc etc.” Notwithstanding the mix of naivete and immorality of Western politicians, this is frankly “bollocks”. Human Rights Watch, the UN and a number of respected journalists have investigated the Balkan wars of the 1990s in great detail, so where on earth do these deluded ideas come from? I haven't yet been to Srebrenica, familiar for its pictures of mothers and widows kneeling weeping in front of the granite memorial to the almost 8000 murdered in cold blood over a period of days in Summer 1995. But I have been to the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp where Croat fascists in World War 2 murdered not thousands of Serbs but hundreds of thousands. And there is no roll of names of the slain and the lost; they simply disappeared with whole communities, names unrecorded and numbers unknown.
I spotted the new “Dr Dabić Fanclub” on Facebook and immediately assumed that this was a healthy outbreak of Serbian irony, one of the reasons Brits tend to like the Serbs. Alas, not so simple. Those who felt moved to post public comments on the Wall were either applauding Dr Dabić's Serbian genius to have evaded apprehension so exquisitely, or genuinely regretted his surrender to an unjust court. Some comments deserve an answer, such as why are there so many Serbs at the Hague and so few Croats, Bosnians and Kosovan Albanians? Most comments reflected the Serbian popular mythology that Serbia is being victimised, yet again. That is simple and tragic. But the idea that President Tadić simply sacrificed principle in order to get Serbia into the European Union is an insult to the Serbian nation, a nation that stood up to both the Austrians and to Hitler on principle. Other comments were worth reading. I even posted my first complaint “report”; I enjoy black humour like any other normal person, since if you didn't laugh in a fallen world you would spend your life in tears, however a Srebrenica joke is likely to incite a Facebook bushfire of Bosnian Muslim hate posts which will not help anyone. Another opined that the Hague won't be satisfied until it has received the very bones of Saint Lazar; but one sane lone voice simply reposted that this was “a small blow for Serbia, but a big one for mankind”. At last, the notion of justice is in view.
Without justice it seems that it is impossible for there to be healing and reconciliation. It is the way God made us. We recognize justice, and when we feel the pain of being wronged we demand justice. Bulldozing the site of one of the worst concentration camps of World War 2 at Jasenovac did not heal over that terrible crime of ethnic cleansing against the Serbs. National denial by Serbs, a sort of mental bulldozing, of the facts of recent history will leave a generation damaged and touchy. As the psalmist said “Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.” Would any of us seriously swap a society with a moral foundation that distinguishes right from wrong for a house of mirrors where self interest and power rule?
14 July 2008 – The language that knows no borders
Here is a tiring and stupid drama about politics and border crossings! If you know that you are a pilgrim marching to a different beat it is a lot easier to take these privations in an enquiring and prayerful way. We 3 crossed the Kosovo border into Macedonia en route for Serbia and little did I realize that I was immediately infected with some sort of passport virus that would wait peacefully before replicating itself at every Serbian border crossing. In happy ignorance we travelled the hot and bumping roads to Prohor Pčinjski where the border guards firmly and good naturedly told me that I could not cross! Kosovo is Serbia and any stamp that says otherwise is enough to banish you from the Serbian motherland “twix heaven and earth”. My friends, whose Serbian passports had not been stamped for that reason were allowed through. No amount of arguing would prevail, so I returned and tried my luck, foolishly as it turned out, at the next crossing on the busy main Skopje-Belgrade road. I joined the queue out of Macedonia for the second time, queued into Serbia and was promptly sent to the back of the queue out of Serbia and back into Macedonia! So back to Kosovo, and it felt a long way this time but it was nothing compared with the very slow trek out to the Kosovo border at Bujanovac where the police, perhaps more personally familiar with the privations of becoming homeless, let me through. After some debate and good humour a senior NCO type gave me my passport and said “beži!”. Escape I did. Some day; I left Macedonia 3 times, Kosovo twice but managed to enter Serbia (from Serbia - according to Serbs) only once!
The fall back position was to go to Priština and beg for a new passport, but this would have involved staying somewhere with a Novi Sad registered vehicle which rather stood out. I noticed a new church along the way; no idea if it was Roman Catholic or new Protestant (quite a lot of them exist). But then in another village I noticed what looked like a brand new Orthodox church, and the dear priest could even be seen in the yard. Happily (or perhaps sadly) the adventure didn't develop in this direction. Quite tough living in a small Serbian enclave astride a main road with hostile Albanian communities around you. I gave a lift to an Albanian youth who was probably wondering the wisdom of jumping into a Serbian vehicle. We couldn't communicate in English or Serbian so it wasn't such an entertaining encounter for him. But, when he eventually jumped out this teenager shook me by the hand, the language that knows no borders.
12 July 2008 – The mountain sheep are sweeter
On the Serbian side of Šar Planina, on the eastern end, there seem to be no sheep at all. Before the Kosovo war there were 5000 and according to varying accounts the Albanians took them or they got sold to NATO to feed hungry soldiers. The mountain sides were quiet and still. Maybe this was good for the chamois (wild goats as they are called); we enjoyed watching a pair in their mountain setting but a trio of locals who passed our camp at 0530 reported on their return in the evening that they had found a herd of over 60. As we breasted the ridge at almost 2500m on the Macedonian border I was delighted to see a flock of sheep slowing coming up. This would be an Albanian shepherd on ketun or summer pasturage. But what made this especially interesting was that I could count no less than 7 Šar planina sheep dogs; these are huge grey and cream dogs famous all over the Balkans for their ability to protect flocks from wolves. Shepherds and dogs have developed a classic highly developed relationship over centuries or even millennia. Before the Serbs first roamed into these Balkan mountains in the 8th Century, the little know Vlahs were already here with their sheep and dogs in mountain pastures. As migrations swept up the valleys and over the passes the Vlahs simply climbed a bit higher and kept their summer pasturages and sheep raising secrets. Who knows how these pastoral groups were integrated into Slavic or Albanian communities, but that seems to be what happened. Such musings occupied me happily as this historical theatre unfolded, but my companions were a little unsure about packs of dogs and wild “Šiptar” shepherds.
There was a tiny pool of water right on the mountain ridge, a place where melt-water collected, and it was clear that this was the flock's destination. First, well in advance the dogs came up, clearly familiar with the ground, and then slowly came the flock of some 300 ewes and lambs. The shepherd was probably more apprehensive of this cross-cultural meeting than we, but we quickly made contact and enjoyed sitting together on a rocky outcrop with one of these fabled dogs stretched out beside us just like man's best friend. This is an advantage of the former Jugoslavija; everyone can understand and speak a certain amount of Serbian, and like many Albanians in Macedonia he had done military service in Belgrade. What a delight! I wish I could have expressed the respect I held for such a time honoured and special tradition; perhaps the heart conveys better than words what we really want to say. Of course he found life hard. No money. He spent the summer on the Šar planina and then sold his lambs in the autumn. Yet again, here is a priceless and time honoured way of life with vital conservation implications which could be hugely helped with some marketing. Lamb is wonderful meat, and though the valley sheep are fatter the mountain sheep are sweeter.
Of course I asked about wolves. Indeed there are wolves, and bears too in the forest! Just the day before yesterday he told us that a pair of wolves had attacked the flock but his dogs had driven them off. The dog wolf fled but the she-wolf stood her ground and fought. But a pack of 7 Šar planina dogs was more than enough, and the wolf was driven off. I have actually seen an extraordinary black and white film of a Šar planina killing a wolf. The film showed a flock in an enclosure in the snow. A wolf pack apparently approached and the sheep dog leapt out of the coral to find the wolves; meanwhile a pair of wolves jumps into the enclosure and starts killing sheep. The dog returns, jumps in with sheep and wolves and single-handedly kills both wolves. Wolves stand tall but they are not as heavy as a Šar planina. So reluctantly I turned from the ridge with this other world of sheep, dogs, wolves and strange languages; yet my heart sang, for this was an encounter with man the divine living as close as you can get to God's precious creation.
12 July 2008 – Things too amazing
I have had to admit the obvious; hill-walking, where there is a distant alluring top to be reached, does not go well with birding and botanising where the distance travelled is entirely secondary to the delights and diversions along the way. If you are lacing up your hiking boots and your companion in trainers is checking out her butterfly net you need to rethink the plan! Like the birds of the air, whither they go is anyone's guess. But I needn't complain having learnt patience and flexibility, and of course I would irritate any serious walker by settling down to photograph that universe of mountain flowers blowing in the wind. Camping at 1700m we enjoyed 2 days of fine weather and incomparable delights wandering up onto the tops of these “mini Alps” constantly stopping to enjoy the breathtaking views. You are well above the tree line and into high montane vegetation and rocky outcrops. Home for many birds that are hard to find elsewhere in Serbia. On the very first top we found the almost mythical Horned lark (alpestris) with its black bib, yellow face and “horns”, denizens of the high rocky tops. There were mountain pipits and other elusive dwellers of alpine tufts of grass and rock. Ah! I heard them and then I saw those black winged acrobats diving and playing on the air, the Alpine chough, yellow billed, black fingered wings against the high blue of a clear cold sky. Very close on a rocky outcrop at last we found the Alpine accentor, that cousin of the lowland Dunnock, and protesting at our presence, rattling in a familiar sounding way, Miloš spotted the Rock thrush, yet another first for me.
I can't even try to describe the flowers but see the gallery where you are free to identify some of them for me. Everything has its niche, adapted perfectly for these harsh conditions of extreme cold or extreme drought. Many of the most colourful flowers found niches in little depressions; pink geraniums and carnations, tiny stone-crops, yellow lichens; rock gardens without compare. On 2 occasions we watched spellbound as a kestrel and a hobby sparred together, diving, racing, apparently playing on the mountain draughts of air; they probably compete for the same insect diet. No falconer could arrange such a magical display of aerial prowess. Another treat was to spot a large raptor way out over the valley to the West; gradually it glided towards us at the same elevation until with a single beat of huge wings it identified itself as a Golden eagle. It made one realize what huge territories they need for hunting the mountain hare, and I wonder whether their hunting doesn't have a “management” aspect where the eagle knows its quarry well and builds up a database of potential meals as it surveys and constantly patrols its mountain kingdom.
Our campsite, by the hardly functioning ski facility was alive with birds; linnets, siskins, whinchats, finches, yellow hammers abounded. A large colony of house martens were enjoying the hotel eaves; a hobby again (swallow-taker in Serbian) was to be seen perched on a redundant ski lift. But a first for all of us was a large brownish-backed falcon surveying the world from a dead tree above our camp. If it was Vojvodina I would recognize it as a Saker, but this had to be the Lanner falcon. How beautiful to find shared sentiment and wonder with some unknown writer of Proverbs thousands of years ago in a different place in a different language: “There are three things that are too amazing for me. Four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a maid.” And because Đura Daničić's Serbian translation achieves a poetic rhythm and seems to me exceptionally beautiful I shall add it here! “Троје ми је чудесно, и четвртог не разумем: Пут орлов у небо, пут смијин по стени, пут лађин посред мора, и пут човечији к девојци.”
We woke up 10 days ago to the startling sight of the silver bearded pony-tailed Dr Dabić, New Belgrade alternative health practitioner, being paraded before the television cameras with claims that this was none other than the War Crimes Tribunal fugitive Radovan Karadžić. And so it turns out. The political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, along with his military commander and close ally General Ratko Mladić, disappeared more than a decade ago· As Slavenka Drakulić, who wrote about war criminals at The Hague in They Would Never Hurt a Fly, put it “they waited for the right time to pick him up like a ripe fruit.” The implication is that Karadžić sympathisers within the Serbian security services protected him and are still protecting Mladić. To Westerners it is obvious. The sooner Mladić and others of all nationalities indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal are brought before this international court, the better. To those who lived within the maelstrom of the civil wars that surrounded the breakup of Yugoslavia it is not so simple. And I have made an immediate mistake. It isn't just those who lived through it, but a whole younger generation is marked by it, even those who were too young to remember it, and those who lived far from the fighting and ethnic cleansing.
I was talking to a 16 year old about the news, and it was a sadly familiar theme. He threw end to end a whole series of incredible reasons why the Yugoslav civil wars happened; wait for it. “American ambitions to build Balkan bases, American oil grabs, an American-Albanian conspiracy, American need to test new weapons etc etc.” Notwithstanding the mix of naivete and immorality of Western politicians, this is frankly “bollocks”. Human Rights Watch, the UN and a number of respected journalists have investigated the Balkan wars of the 1990s in great detail, so where on earth do these deluded ideas come from? I haven't yet been to Srebrenica, familiar for its pictures of mothers and widows kneeling weeping in front of the granite memorial to the almost 8000 murdered in cold blood over a period of days in Summer 1995. But I have been to the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp where Croat fascists in World War 2 murdered not thousands of Serbs but hundreds of thousands. And there is no roll of names of the slain and the lost; they simply disappeared with whole communities, names unrecorded and numbers unknown.
p to both the Austrians and to Hitler on principle. Other comments were worth reading. I even posted my first complaint “report”; I enjoy black humour like any other normal person, since if you didn't laugh in a fallen world you would spend your life in tears, however a Srebrenica joke is likely to incite a Facebook bushfire of Bosnian Muslim hate posts which will not help anyone. Another opined that the Hague won't be satisfied until it has received the very bones of Saint Lazar; but one sane lone voice simply reposted that this was “a small blow for Serbia, but a big one for mankind”. At last, the notion of justice is in view.
Here is a tiring and stupid drama about politics and border crossings! If you know that you are a pilgrim marching to a different beat it is a lot easier to take these privations in an enquiring and prayerful way. We 3 crossed the Kosovo border into Macedonia en route for Serbia and little did I realize that I was immediately infected with some sort of passport virus that would wait peacefully before replicating itself at every Serbian border crossing. In happy ignorance we travelled the hot and bumping roads to Prohor Pčinjski where the border guards firmly and good naturedly told me that I could not cross! Kosovo is Serbia and any stamp that says otherwise is enough to banish you from the Serbian motherland “twix heaven and earth”. My friends, whose Serbian passports had not been 
stamped for that reason were allowed through. No amount of arguing would prevail, so I returned and tried my luck, foolishly as it turned out, at the next crossing on the busy main Skopje-Belgrade road. I joined the queue out of Macedonia for the second time, queued into Serbia and was promptly sent to the back of the queue out of Serbia and back into Macedonia! So back to Kosovo, and it felt a long way this time but it was nothing compared with the very slow trek out to the Kosovo border at Bujanovac where the police, perhaps more personally familiar with the privations of becoming homeless, let me through. After some debate and good humour a senior NCO type gave me my passport and said “beži!”. Escape I did. Some day; I left Macedonia 3 times, Kosovo twice but managed to enter Serbia (from Serbia - according to Serbs) only once!
The fall back position was to go to Priština and beg for a new passport, but this would have involved staying somewhere with a Novi Sad registered vehicle which rather stood out. I noticed a new church along the way; no idea if it was Roman Catholic or new Protestant (quite a lot of them exist). But then in another village I noticed what looked like a brand new Orthodox church, and the dear priest could even be seen in the yard. Happily (or perhaps sadly) the adventure didn't develop in this direction. Quite tough living in a small Serbian enclave astride a main road with hostile Albanian communities around you. I gave a lift to an Albanian youth who was probably wondering the wisdom of jumping into a Serbian vehicle. We couldn't communicate in English or Serbian so it wasn't such an entertaining encounter for him. But, when he eventually jumped out this teenager shook me by the hand, the language that knows no borders.
On the Serbian side of Šar Planina, on the eastern end, there seem to be no sheep at all. Before the Kosovo war there were 5000 and according to varying accounts the Albanians took them or they got sold to NATO to feed hungry soldiers. The mountain sides were quiet and still. Maybe this was good for the chamois (wild goats as they are called); we enjoyed watching a pair in their mountain setting but a trio of locals who passed our camp at 0530 reported on their return in the evening that they had found a herd of over 60. As we breasted the ridge at almost 2500m on the Macedonian border I was delighted to see a flock of sheep slowing coming up. This would be an Albanian shepherd on ketun or summer pasturage. But what made this especially interesting was 
that I could count no less than 7 Šar planina sheep dogs; these are huge grey and cream dogs famous all over the Balkans for their ability to protect flocks from wolves. Shepherds and dogs have developed a classic highly developed relationship over centuries or even millennia. Before the Serbs first roamed into these Balkan mountains in the 8th Century, the little know Vlahs were already here with their sheep and dogs in mountain pastures. As migrations swept up the valleys and over the passes the Vlahs simply climbed a bit higher and kept their summer pasturages and sheep raising secrets. Who knows how these pastoral groups were integrated into Slavic or Albanian communities, but that seems to be what happened. Such musings occupied me happily as this historical theatre unfolded, but my companions were a little unsure about packs of dogs and wild “Šiptar” shepherds.
There was a tiny pool of water right on the mountain ridge, a place where melt-water collected, and it was clear that this was the flock's destination. First, well in advance the dogs came up, clearly familiar with the ground, and then slowly came the flock of some 300 ewes and lambs. The shepherd was probably more apprehensive of this cross-cultural meeting than we, but we quickly made contact and
enjoyed sitting together on a rocky outcrop with one of these fabled dogs stretched out beside us just like man's best friend. This is an advantage of the former Jugoslavija; everyone can understand and speak a certain amount of Serbian, and like many Albanians in Macedonia he had done military service in Belgrade. What a delight! I wish I could have expressed the respect I held for such a time honoured and special tradition; perhaps the heart conveys better than words what we really want to say. Of course he found life hard. No money. He spent the summer on the Šar planina and then sold his lambs in the autumn. Yet again, here is a priceless and time honoured way of life with vital conservation implications which could be hugely helped with some marketing. Lamb is wonderful meat, and though the valley sheep are fatter the mountain sheep are sweeter.
Of course I asked about wolves. Indeed there are wolves, and bears too in the forest! Just the day before yesterday he told us that a pair of wolves had attacked the flock but his dogs had driven them off. The dog wolf fled but the she-wolf stood her ground and fought. But a pack of 7 Šar planina dogs was more than enough, and the wolf was driven off. I have actually seen an extraordinary black and white film of a Šar planina killing a wolf. The film showed a flock in an enclosure in the snow. A wolf pack apparently approached and the sheep dog leapt out of the coral to find the wolves; meanwhile a pair of wolves jumps into the enclosure and starts killing sheep. The dog returns, jumps in with sheep and wolves and single-handedly kills both wolves. Wolves stand tall but they are not as heavy as a Šar planina. So reluctantly I turned from the ridge with this other world of sheep, dogs, wolves and strange languages; yet my heart sang, for this was an encounter with man the divine living as close as you can get to God's precious creation.
I have had to admit the obvious; hill-walking, where there is a distant alluring top to be reached, does not go well with birding and botanising where the distance travelled is entirely secondary to the delights and diversions along the way. If you are lacing up your hiking boots and your companion in trainers is checking out her butterfly net you need to rethink the plan! Like the birds of the air, whither they go is anyone's guess. But I needn't complain having learnt patience and flexibility, and of course I would irritate any serious walker by settling down to photograph that universe of mountain flowers blowing in the wind. Camping at 1700m we enjoyed 2 days of fine 
weather and incomparable delights wandering up onto the tops of these “mini Alps” constantly stopping to enjoy the breathtaking views. You are well above the tree line and into high montane vegetation and rocky outcrops. Home for many birds that are hard to find elsewhere in 
Serbia. On the very first top we found the almost mythical Horned lark (alpestris) with its black bib, yellow face and “horns”, denizens of the high rocky tops. There were mountain pipits and other elusive dwellers of alpine tufts of grass and rock. Ah! I heard them and then I saw those black winged acrobats diving and playing on the air, the Alpine chough, yellow billed, black fingered wings against the high blue of a clear cold sky. Very close on a rocky outcrop at last we found the Alpine accentor, that cousin of the lowland Dunnock, and protesting at our presence, rattling in a familiar sounding way, Miloš spotted the Rock thrush, yet another first for me.
I can't even try to describe the flowers but see the gallery where you are free to identify some of them for me. Everything has its niche, adapted perfectly for these harsh conditions of extreme cold or extreme drought. Many of the most colourful flowers found niches in little depressions; pink geraniums and carnations, tiny stone-crops, yellow lichens; rock gardens without compare. On 2 occasions we watched spellbound as a kestrel and a hobby sparred together, diving, 
racing, apparently playing on the mountain draughts of air; they probably compete for the same insect diet. No falconer could arrange such a magical display of aerial prowess. Another treat was to spot a large raptor way out over the valley to the West; gradually it glided towards us at the same elevation until with a single beat of huge wings it identified itself as a Golden eagle. It made one realize what huge territories they need for hunting the mountain hare, and I wonder whether their hunting doesn't have a “management” aspect where the eagle knows its quarry well and builds up a database of potential meals as it surveys and constantly patrols its mountain kingdom.
Our campsite, by the hardly functioning ski facility was alive with birds; linnets, siskins, whinchats, finches, yellow hammers abounded. A large colony of house martens were enjoying the hotel eaves; a hobby again (swallow-taker in Serbian) was to be seen perched on a redundant ski lift. But a first for all of us was a large brownish-backed falcon surveying the world from a dead tree above our camp. If it was Vojvodina I would recognize it as a Saker, but this had to be the Lanner 
falcon. How beautiful to find shared sentiment and wonder with some unknown writer of Proverbs thousands of years ago in a different place in a different language: “There are three things that are too amazing for me. Four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a maid.” And because Đura Daničić's Serbian translation achieves a poetic rhythm and seems to me exceptionally beautiful I shall add it here! “Троје ми је чудесно, и четвртог не разумем: Пут орлов у небо, пут смијин по стени, пут лађин посред мора, и пут човечији к девојци.”