Blair’s moment in the Balkans

BERTRAND LANGLOIS/AFP

Most appraisals of Tony Blair’s time in office have focused on his role in the Iraq war, and that will surely be a key part of his legacy. My strongest impression of him formed much earlier. It was the summer of 1997 and I was working in Sarajevo on refugee issues. The Bosnian war had ended 18 months before, and a large NATO force was struggling to implement the Dayton Accords. One hotly debated question was whether NATO troops should go out of their way to apprehend indicted war criminals. Many Western generals and politicians were nervous; they didn’t want to incite an insurgency and they were content to monitor the fragile ceasefire. Disheartening reports of war criminals passing through NATO checkpoints became commonplace.

Blair had taken office in May. He sounded good, but I was skeptical. After all, Britain’s Bosnia policy had been horrendous for years. Then, one day in the middle of July, news broke that British SAS commandos had confronted and shot a Serb war criminal in northern Bosnia. Almost overnight, the tenor of the Bosnia mission changed. The British operation stiffened the spine of the other NATO countries, and soon the power of Bosnia’s extreme nationalists began to slip. It was a gutsy move for a brand new prime minister.