I was a 19-year-old living in Banja Luka, the second-largest city in Bosnia, when Yugoslavia began falling apart. What I remember most is the shock and speed with which my normal life and that of my friends abruptly ended.
Author
- Olivera Simic
Professor in Law, Griffith University
At the time, I wasn't following politics or watching the news much, so I had no idea what was to come - a full-blown war and genocide of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim people), led by Ratko Mladić , the Bosnian Serbian general and convicted war criminal, who died this week in a prison in The Hague.
Ethnicity was not something my friends and I ever talked about growing up. Two of my best friends were non-Serbs, which I only realised when they suddenly left Bosnia in April and May of 1992.
Soon after, I learned I was to be drafted into the Serbian territorial defence, not knowing what that even was. I went to pick up my uniform and boots, and that's when my parents put me on the bus to leave the country. I didn't know where I was going.
This was how I left my country, on my own, for the first time in my life: in haste, without goodbyes, not knowing if or when I would see my family again.
I was not the only one. Almost two million Bosnians were displaced during the war.
Now, with Mladić's death, these memories of the war are flooding back, juxtaposed with the disheartening scenes of Mladić being celebrated by Serbs in Bosnia as a hero.
He was not a hero; nor is it helpful to refer to him simply as a "madman" or a "butcher". Mladić is a symbolic reminder of the unresolved legacies of the war - the continued divisions among Bosnians and selective memories that many have about the atrocities that occurred.
Swift rise up the ranks
Mladić was a career military officer in the Yugoslav army. His rise through the ranks was accelerated at the beginning of the Bosnian war when he was named commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb army.
It's important to understand this newly created army inherited all of its armour from the former Yugoslav army. It had all the weapons and military infrastructure in Bosnia, and was led by an experienced professional officer in Mladić.
Mladić's army quickly took over 70% of the country, laying siege to the capital, Sarajevo. More than 100,000 people died in the war from 1992-95. At least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed by the Bosnian Serb Army in the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995.
Mladić was the face of this ruthless military campaign, and the rise of Serb nationalism at the time.
In my research , I've reviewed the accounts of Serbian soldiers and wartime leaders, and I've spoken extensively with Biljana Plavšić , the former president of the Bosnian Serb Republic and the only woman to be indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Plavšić worked closely with Mladić and knew him very well.
Serbian soldiers and leaders - and, unfortunately, many Serbs themselves - admired him for his perceived courageousness, his extraordinary self-confidence and his expressions of power.
This is why, to this day, many Serbs still see him as their protector - as a saint, who defended Serbs during the war. He has a special place in Serb mythology, due to the way generations of young Serbs have been indoctrinated by the narratives of his heroism during the war.
When the war was over in 1996, Mladić went into hiding for nearly 16 years, living in rural Serbia until he was arrested. He was tried in The Hague and convicted of war crimes, and sentenced to life in prison in 2017.
Understanding Mladić, the man and war criminal
As a scholar of mass atrocities, I think we need to be careful how we try to understand or explain the actions of the perpetrators of these crimes.
The media portrays Mladić as a monster, a madman, and the " Butcher of Bosnia ". But I believe it's important to note he was not a psychopath.
Characterising him that way diminishes his criminal responsibility, as well as the structures that made his crimes possible. It paints him as someone detached from humanity.
Mladić was deemed "extraordinary" for the crimes he committed, but at the same time he was also an "ordinary" family man. His only daughter committed suicide in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1994, using his pistol . Some claimed she killed herself after finding out about her father's role in the war.
It's important to see Mladić not as some monster who committed mass crimes, but as a human being who did so. Humanising someone convicted of war crimes and genocide sits uncomfortably with many, as it risks diminishing the gravity of their crimes and their culpability. These concerns should be taken seriously.
Still, understanding how people like Mladić could commit these crimes is important if we want to learn how to prevent them from happening in the future.
An important part of this was the huge military infrastructure around Mladić. He alone couldn't commit all of the atrocities in the war. He had an army of people who supported his decisions and acted on his orders.
His complicated legacy lives on
Mladić's arrest and conviction was historically important, but this justice has been incomplete. No judgement or sentence can bring back the thousands of lives that were extinguished, nor can it return people displaced from their homes.
Most importantly, Bosnians may have secured legal justice with Mladić's conviction, but many still feel they haven't received moral justice. Neither Mladić nor any other convicted war criminal has ever expressed remorse or admitted their crimes to the families of the victims. Even more devastating is the fact they are celebrated as heroes by many, rather than deemed war criminals.
Mladić's conviction also didn't bring reconciliation to modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia hoped it would accomplish this through its work, but it never happened. The tribunal's historic judgements and witness testimonies didn't eliminate the denial that still exists among many about the crimes committed during the war.
The prosecutions created millions of pages of evidence, which confirmed indisputably that the Srebrenica genocide happened and was committed by certain individuals. Both UN and domestic courts also ruled this a genocide.
Yet many Serbs still don't believe this is true. In 2024, thousands of Bosnian Serbs took to the streets in my hometown, Banja Luka, against a proposed UN resolution commemorating the Srebrenica genocide. The Bosnian Serb parliament also approved a report denying the genocide happened.
And after hearing the news of Mladić's death this week, many young Bosnian Serbs came out to the streets to celebrate his life and legacy. They carried flags and posters depicting Mladić's face, singing and chanting his name. These young people were mostly born after the war, but they were raised hearing these narratives about Mladić being the saviour of the Serbs.
There is something deeply wrong with the legacy of the postwar prosecutions - specifically how the government has failed to rebuild society - if we cannot eliminate this denial or erase this thinking about Mladić's supposed heroics.
In my view, the blame for this lies with the Serb leadership that came into power after the war, which allowed this enormous historical revisionism to take place.
Mladić and the other wartime leaders are not portrayed in Bosnian Serb history textbooks as war criminals. Rather, they are described as heroes who established Republika Srpska , the separate, Serbian- majority part of Bosnia and Herzegovina that emerged from the war.
This is why the war never really ended. It continues to be fought today in other ways, through official narratives, symbols and memorabilia.
As a scholar who has devoted a career to documenting the war crimes of this era, it is devastating to see there are hardly any facts about the war that are accepted by all Bosnians. Until we have that, Bosnia will remain divided.
Olivera Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
