'Butcher of Bosnia' brought to justice: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ...

The decision by United Nations judges to sentence former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic widely known as the "Butcher of Bosnia" to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of genocide and war crimes in the Balkan conflicts was long awaited by tens of thousands of his mourning victims across the region. A number of those gathered outside the courtroom were clutching photos of loved ones who died or are among the 7,000 missing. Understandably, the victims' families were only "partially satisfied" with the verdict. According to Munira Subasic, president of the Mothers of Srebrenica association, "It's more than (Radovan) Karadzic. But they [the judges] didn't find him guilty for the accusation of genocide in some villages." The judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladic guilty on 10 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-1995 war. However, he was found not guilty of one charge of genocide in the municipalities. About 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million displaced in the ethnic rivalries which tore Yugoslavia apart, with judges pointing out that "ruthless" Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic's command carried out mass executions and showed little or no respect for human life and dignity. Although the judges did not name in their verdict the ethnic or religious identity of those fell victims to Mladic's wave of repression, most were Bosnian Muslims.
The Ottoman Turks had used a word meaning "Bosnians" (bosnaklar) to refer to all those who lived in Bosnia; but in Serb-Croat the only people who had traditionally called themselves "Bosnians" were the Bosnian Muslims. Field Marshall Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia comprised six republics; and Bosnia, centrally located and populated by a mixture of all ethnic groups among these republics, was truly multi-cultural and prided itself on religious tolerance. It was perhaps the only Yugoslav republic where ethnic hostilities and suspicions were almost absent as compared to the other five republics, particularly Serbia, the largest republic containing two provinces to which Tito, himself a Croat, gave greater autonomy in order to prevent Serbian domination of other republics. Tito's most profound success was that he was the only man who had ever been able to make the hostile populations that peopled the six republics be civil towards one another.
The relatives of the victims were highly charged in response to the Hague verdict. One of its best expressions were in the words of 18-year-old Edin Halilovic, whose grandfather died in the 1995 genocide in the town of Srebrenica: "It has been important to attend the hearing. My generation, and future generations, must never forget what happened to our families". The President of Russia at that time marking the post-Soviet era, Boris Yeltsin, will always be condemned by Yugoslavs and Russians alike for his indecisiveness about Nato's role in the Balkan War (it was the first-ever use of force by the military alliance outside of its member countries' own borders). President Bill Clinton will be remembered for his boldness and farsightedness in relation to the crisis that had at one stage begun to threaten the peace of the entire world. However, little did Clinton know that his action of ordering Nato's intervention in the Balkan theatre would always cast a shadow on the relationship between the post-Cold War Kremlin and the White House.