Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić (born March 12, 1942 in Božinovići, Bosnia-Herzegovina) was the leader of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) (the Bosnian Serb Army) during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. In 1996 Mladic, along with other Serbian leaders, was accused of War Crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague in connection with the the siege of Sarajevo in which 10,000 people died and the massacre of 8,100 Muslim men and boys on July 11, 1995 during the Srebrenica massacre—Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
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Early life
Mladić was born in Božinovići, Bosnia-Herzegovina, then a part of the short-lived Independent State of Croatia, a satellite state created after the Nazi German and Italian Fascist invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1941. His father, Neđo, was a Partisan guerilla fighter and was killed by the ustashe in the spring of 1945 during a charge on the birthplace of Croatian Nazi sympathizer Ante Pavelić. To this day his family does not know where he was buried.
Ratko's family describes his childhood as very active. He is reputed to have been a very diligent pupil in school, as well as taking care of household chores without being pressured to do so. Popular with the girls of the village, he was a very active and brave youth. "You know how the old people would say," his uncle remembers, "if you threw him out of an airplane he'd land on his feet. He wouldn't fall on his head, you could always expect him to land on his feet."
His ambitions changed as he grew up. He wanted to be a school teacher when he was very young, then at age eleven he decided he wanted to be a surgeon, sometime later he decided that soldiering was what he was made for.
In 1960 Ratko remembers describing himself as a Yugoslav. After his rebirth as a Serb nationalist, he remembers, "I'm not proud of that decision. My only justification is that I was young."
Early Military Career
Mladić entered the Military Industry School in Zemun in 1961, then went on to the KOV Military Academy, and then Officers Academy, graduating at the top of his class with a grade of 9.57. Upon his graduation in 1965, his first post as an officer was in Skopje, where he was the youngest soldier in the unit which he commanded. Beginning as a sub-lieutenant, he proved himself to be a capable officer, first commanding a platoon, then a batallion, then a brigade, and in 1989 was promoted to Training Section Head for the Third Army District.
Role in the Yugoslav wars
In June 1991, Mladić was promoted to Assistant Commandant of the Pristina Corps in the tense Kosovo province, dominated by separatist ethnic Albanians. As the situation in Croatia rapidly devolved, he was almost immediately re-posted to Knin as a Commander of the 9th Corps of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), during fighting between the JNA and Croatian forces. On October 4, 1991, he was promoted to General Major. The JNA forces under his command participated in the war in Croatia. Among other things, Mladić helped Martić's paramilitary occupy the village of Kijevo.
On April 24, 1992, Mladić was promoted to the rank of General Colonel. On May 2, 1992, one month after the Bosnian Republic's declaration of independence, Mladić, acting under orders from Belgrade, blockaded the city of Sarajevo, shutting off all traffic in and out of the city, as well as water and electricity. This began the four-year Siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege in the history of modern warfare. The city was bombarded with shells, snipers randomly killed civilians, and ethnic cleansing campaigns against Serbs as well as non-Serbs were conducted. On May 9, 1992, he assumed the post of Chief of Staff/Deputy Commander of the Second Military District Headquarters of the JNA in Sarajevo. On 10 May 1992, Mladić assumed the command of the Second Military District Headquarters of the JNA.
On May 12, 1992, the Bosnian Serb Assembly voted to create the VRS, or Army of Republika Srpska. At the same time, Mladić was appointed Commander of the Main Staff of the VRS, a position he held until December 1996. (In May 1992, after the withdrawal of JNA forces from Bosnia, the JNA Second Military District became the nucleus of the Main Staff of the VRS.) On June 24, 1994, he was promoted to the rank of General Colonel over the approximately 80,000 troops stationed in the area.
By 1994 Relations between Mladić and Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžić had gradually cooled. Karadžić thought Mladić pretentious, arrogant, and overly-pious, Mladić thought his President to be a corrupt, manipulative war profiteer. There were occasional public outbursts of animosity, such as when Mladić, upon being told that NATO would bomb Serbian positions, retorted "then I'll bomb London!" The horrified Karadžić announced to the press that Mladić was "A fool, making idiotic and irresponsible statements." The break came on August 1, when Slobodan Milošević sent a peace proposal to the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. The letter to the Muslims was addressed to Alija Izetbegović, the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The letter to the Bosnian Serbs was addressed to Mladić, an open snub of Karadžić. When Karadžić refused to sign, the openly pro-Milošević Mladić calmly made it known to Karadžić that there would thenceforth be a division of labour: he would run the war while Karadzic dominated the Bosnian Serb politicians in Pale and in the Bosnian Serb towns. There was a clear undertone that Karadžić would be well-advised to stay out of Mladić's way. Wild rumors of a Belgrade-supported coup against Karadžić and his allies in Pale likely cemented the arrangement.
In July of 1995 troops commanded by Mladić, harried by NATO air strikes intended to force compliance with a UN ultimatum to remove heavy weapons from the Sarajevo area, overran and occupied the UN "safe areas" of Srebrenica and Žepa. At Srebrenica over 40,000 Bosnian-Muslims who had sought safety there were expelled. An estimated 8,100 were executed, allegedly on Mladic's order[1].
On Friday, August 4, 1995, with a massive Croatian military force poised to attack Serb-held areas in the Krajina, Karadžić announced that he was removing Mladić from his commandant post and assuming personal command of the VRS himself. Karadžić blamed Mladić for the loss of two key Serb towns in western Bosnia that had recently fallen to the Croats, and he used the loss of the towns as the excuse to announce his surprise command structure changes. General Mladić was demoted to an "adviser." Mladić refused to go quietly, claiming the support of both the Bosnian Serb military as well as the people. Karadžić countered by attempting to pull political rank as well as denouncing Mladić as a "madman," but Mladić's obvious popular support forced Karadžić to rescind his order on August 11.
On November 8, 1996, President of the Bosnian Serb Republic Biljana Plavšić dismissed Mladić from his post. He continued to receive his pension until November 2005.
Indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
On July 24, 1995, Mladić was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and numerous war crimes (including crimes relating to the alleged sniping campaign against civilians in Sarajevo). On November 16, 1995, the charges were expanded to include charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for the attack on the United Nations-declared safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995. Mladić is also responsible for the taking of hostages amongst UN peace-keeping personnel.
A fugitive from the ICTY, he is suspected to be hiding either in Serbia or the Republika Srpska. Mladić was reportedly seen attending a football match between China and Yugoslavia in Belgrade in March 2000. He entered through a VIP entrance and sat in a private box surrounded by eight armed bodyguards. Some claim that he has been seen in a suburb of Moscow, and that he is "regularly" in Thessalonica and Athens, which has raised suspicions that numerous fake reports are sent to cover his trail. Some reports say he took refuge in his wartime bunker in Han Pijesak, not far from Sarajevo, or in Montenegro.[2] In early February of 2006 portions of a Serbian military intelligence report were leaked to the Serbian Newspaper Politika which stated that Mladić had been hidden in Army of Republika Srpska and Yugoslav People's Army facilities up until June 1, 2002, when the National Assembly of Serbia passed a law mandating cooperation with The ICTY in The Hague. The then- Chief General of the Yugoslav Army Nebojša Pavković requested that Mladić vacate the facility where he was staying on the mountain Povlen, near Valjeva, after which the Serb military agencies claim to have lost all trace of the fugitive.
His security is undoubtedly well assured[3]. In November 2004 British defence officials conceded that military action was unlikely to be successful in bringing Mladić and other suspects to trial. Putting political pressure on Balkan governments would be more likely to succeed.
In June 2005 The Times newspaper alleged that Mladić had demanded $5m (£2.75m) “compensation” to be given to his family and bodyguards if he gave himself up to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.
The Serbian government continues to tread carefully when it comes to rounding up domestically popular fugitives-on-the-run. On the one hand, the government wishes to maintain support of right-leaning voters. However, Serbia and Montenegro also wish to comply with The Hague with a view to future accession to the European Union.
On February 21, 2006, Mladić was supposedly arrested in the Serbian capital Belgrade and was being transferred via the northeast Bosnian city of Tuzla to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. [4]. The arrest was denied by the Serbian government. The government did not deny rumours of a planned negotiated surrender between Mladić and Serbian Special Forces.
On February 22, 2006, Chief U.N. Prosecutor Carla del Ponte denied the rumours that Mladić had been arrested, claiming the rumours had "absolutely no basis whatsoever". She urged the Serbian government to find him without further delay, saying that Mladić was in reach of the Serbian authorities and had been in Serbia since 1998. She said that failure to capture him would harm Serbia's bid to join the European Union.
Romanian governmental<ref>"Mladici, prins in Romania?", Evenimentul Zilei, 23 February 2006</ref> and Serbian <ref>Serbia and Montenegro International Security Institute Director Claims Mladić Was Arrested in Romania</ref>sources claimed on 22 February 2006 that Mladić was arrested in Romania, near Drobeta-Turnu Severin, close to the Serbian border by a joint Romanian-British special troops.
Family
Ratko is married to Bosa, who has borne him two children; a son named Darko and a daughter named Ana. Darko is married and his wife is on the verge of giving birth to their first child, Ratko's only grandchild so far.
In March 1994 Mladić's 23-year old daughter committed suicide by shooting herself in the head with her father's favorite pistol during her senior year studying medicine at the University of Belgrade. It has been speculated that the reason for her suicide lay in intense criticism of Mladić in the Serbian media at the time. She is buried in Topčider; it is believed that for some time Mladić came regularly to see the grave.
References
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