Ratko Mladić dies: war criminal to some, hero to others

Ratko Mladić, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska who was sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide and war crimes, died on Wednesday in a prison in The Hague, Netherlands, at the age of 84. For Bosnians and the families of more than eight thousand men and boys killed in Srebrenica, he remains one of the central figures of that tragedy, while for some Serbs he is remembered as the man who supposedly "won" Republika Srpska for them by force of arms.

This was explained by historian Boris Mosković of the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in an interview with Seznam Zprávy. According to him, "a cult around Mladić exists among part of the population in Serbia itself, and even more visibly among Bosnian Serbs."

From Yugoslav officer to nationalist

Mladić spent nearly his entire life in the army: he entered the military academy in Belgrade in the early 1960s and later served in various parts of Yugoslavia, mostly in Macedonia. In 1991, during the war in Croatia, he still presented himself as a convinced Yugoslav Titoist officer who supported the idea of "brotherhood and unity" among the country's peoples. Yet by 1991–1992, the historian says, he underwent a sharp ideological transformation, becoming a committed Serbian nationalist — in the view of some scholars, a proponent of a "Greater Serbia."

"Mladić's case shows how Serbs gradually abandoned the idea of Yugoslavia in favor of a purely Serbian identity," Mosković notes.

Responsibility for Srebrenica

In July 1995, forces of Republika Srpska under Mladić's command killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica — an act later recognized by international courts as genocide and the largest mass killing in Europe since World War II. His defense team in The Hague tried to shift responsibility onto the political leadership headed by Radovan Karadžić, but the tribunal upheld Mladić's personal responsibility as the commander who issued the orders and oversaw their execution.

According to the historian, Mladić personally visited Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. While there is no direct proof that he took part in the killings himself, "the chain of command and organization leads straight to him." Colleagues described him as a charismatic but hot-tempered man who, unlike many other commanders, would appear on the front lines himself — there is a known case of him personally defusing a landmine. Some biographers link his subsequent radicalization to the death of his daughter in 1994, which he was convinced was a murder rather than a suicide.

A living cult in the Balkans

After the war, Mladić spent nearly sixteen years in hiding and was only arrested in May 2011; his extradition to the Hague tribunal triggered mass protests in several cities at the time. According to the historian, for the West — and for most Croats and Bosniaks — Mladić is unambiguously a war criminal, but some Serbs see him as the man who supposedly secured, through military means, the creation of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that make up modern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the same time, many Serbs with liberal, pro-European views call him "one of the greatest disgraces of modern Serbian history." Graffiti and portraits of Mladić can still be found in Serbian cities today.

The historian expects news of his death to provoke a strong reaction across the Balkans, with a likely "sense of satisfaction" among Bosniaks, even if open celebrations do not take place. In his view, however, Mladić's death does not close this chapter of history — Serbian society still has to find a way to come to terms with the outcome of the wars of the 1990s and the legacy of the Hague tribunal, whose reputation in Serbia remains deeply contested.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz