By Labaran Yusuf
The man responsible for the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare; the deadly three-year siege of Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo, and the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, the genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica; Ratko Mladic, has been sentenced to life in prison, for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in the Hague.
Dubbed the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, Mladic, the war-time Bosnian Serb general was once a devoted Yugoslav soldier, then a war crimes suspect on the run for more than a decade. The former chief prosecutor of the ICTY, Carla Del Ponte, described the fugitive she hunted for years in order to bring him to book as “a very, very dangerous man”.
Ratko Mladic at a glance
Born during World War II as a child of a Yugoslav Communist Partisan family, Ratko Mladic at 22 became an officer and youngest commander of a Yugoslav People’s Army engineering unit. By joining the military, Mladic followed in his father’s footsteps – who was killed in one of the last battles at the end of WWII.
At the end of the Second World War, under the power of the Communist party of Yugoslavia, the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was formed; a multi-ethnic nation composed of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Slovenes, and Macedonians. Josip Broz Tito, a communist that led anti-Nazi forces, ruled Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.
In June 1991, Yugoslavia disintegrated when Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, marking the beginning of the break-up of Yugoslavia. Mladic was called on and was appointed commander. Under Mladic’s command, Yugoslav troops and local Serbs attacked and took over some towns, leaving in their trail death and destruction. This model was used all over former Yugoslavia – in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The units and military insignia changed, but the strategy remained the same.
The ‘Butcher of Bosnia’
When the war spilled into Bosnia and Herzegovina in May 1992, Mladic and his forces blockaded the city of Sarajevo, starting the 46 months devastating siege of the city known as the ‘Jerusalem of Europe’. With an average of 330 shells pummeling the city daily, more than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo during the siege.
“Shoot at slow intervals till I order you to stop. Target Velesici [neighborhood], there aren’t too many Serbs living there. Shell them till they’re on the edge of madness”, were the infamous words of the now 74-year old un-apologetic ex-Commander, as he orders his troops to terrorize the inhabitants of Sarajevo just downhills, with artillery and sniper during the three-year siege.
In July 1995, towards the end of the war, Bosnian Serbs under Mladic overran Srebrenica, a UN-declared ‘safe area’ guarded by a few hundred Dutch troops. In little less than a week, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys; meant to be under UN protection were systematically killed, and dumped in mass graves, the worst genocide to occur in European soil since the Holocaust.
The ‘joint criminal enterprise’
Prosecutors say Mladic, along with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the chief fomenter of the Balkans war, and financial supporter of the Serb forces; and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was at the time Mladic’s political leader were among the key players that formed the “joint criminal enterprise” to create a Greater Serbia. These Serb leaders invented ethnic cleansing and institutionalized rape to the modern world.
During the 1992-1995 war, they perpetrated mass rapes of Bosniak women and girls; kept Bosniak prisoners in appalling conditions – starving, thirsty and sick in concentration camps; terrorized civilians in Sarajevo by shelling and sniping at women, children and the elderly; deported Bosniaks forcibly en masse; and destroyed Bosniaks’ homes and mosques.
Even the UN human rights chief describe Mladic as the “epitome of evil” and said his prosecution was “the epitome of what international justice is all about”, and Amnesty International’s declaration of the sentence as a “landmark moment for justice”. The haunting legacy of Mladic and his cohorts is still visible in the world today. One might wonder if the Burmese military is using a page from the Serb’s manual in its treatment of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
At the long last, most Bosnians feel justice was partially satisfied. Many will remember Mladic as the same butcher of the 90s’, who killed people while they queue for water and bread. As the dangerous man he is, one that shelled hospitals, museums, markets and libraries in the city of Sarajevo. And the mastermind, of the worst act of genocide in Europe since WWII.
Yusuf writes from Jos, Plateau state. Email: [email protected]
Crime
