Currently in Serbia, where Ratko Mladic, the last of the great war crimes suspects, was arrested on Wednesday. We've been up to the village where he was found, which is home to several families of his cousins, and is classic Serb redneck territory: lots of big, beefy blokes, and the occasional bit of hostility to the visiting "Western" press, whom they still accuse - rightly, to an extent - of being biased against them during the Balkans wars.
Still, after all those years standing out like a billiard ball in Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere, I find a certain relief in working in a place where I at least look like the people who are being unfriendly to me. Round the Balkans, being a stocky, slightly ruddy-faced white man with a receding hairline is a way of blending in, not standing out. Having said that, I am less than overjoyed when one of the locals wanders up and makes the following friendly remark. "I thought you were a villager," he says. "There's a family around here who all look just like you."
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