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Text File | 1994-09-25 | 19KB | 317 lines

The New York Times Magazine / September 4, 1994 p.26-29

PARIAH AS PATRIOT

R a t k o  M l a d i c

The Bosnian Serb commander has been called a war criminal. He
doesn't see it that way.

By David Binder [David Binder is a New York Times correspondent
who has covered the Balkans since 1963.]

HE IS A CHILD OF WAR AND now a man of war. His eyes are a
piercing light blue, his hair close cropped and steel gray, his
face as wide as a shovel. Seated at a conference table, Gen.
Ratko Mladic talks in a husky baritone about the war in Bosnia
and Herzegovina that has left several hundred thousand dead or
missing and driven a million people from their homes.  We are in
a small stuccoed building in the ski resort town of Pale.
Perched on a bluff amid red pines, the building commands a
spectacular view of the mountains above Sarajevo. Here the
Bosnian Serbs have established the presidency of their
self-proclaimed rebel state, the Republika Srpska, or Republic
of Serbians. In peacetime the building was a psychiatric
sanitarium.  Mladic (pronounced MLAH-ditch) commands the Bosnian
Serbs who seized, and for the last two years have held, more
than 70 percent of a disputed territory about the size of West
Virginia. Although atrocities have been committed by all sides
in the Bosnian conflict, the Serbs have been held accountable
for widespread systematic barbarities, including death camps, on
a scale not seen in Europe since the Nazi era. Two years ago
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, then Secretary of State, included
Mladic in a list of Serb leaders with "political and command
responsibility for crimes against humanity" who should be held
to account "under international law." Last year, Senator Dennis
DeConcini, co-chairman of the Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, said that troops under Mladic's control
"are responsible for many of the atrocities we hear about in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the continuing siege of
Sarajevo, which isolates and strangles the city's more than
300,000 remaining residents."  Asked point-blank about Serb
atrocities committed against Muslims, Mladic responds: "I don't
see it that way. I did what everyone else has done, to defend my
own people. That is our patriotic duty." Unruffled, he
continues: "It would be true to say of me that I had horns on my
head if I had invaded Vietnam, Cambodia or the Falkland Islands.
I did not go to the gulf or Somalia. I was defending my own
home. In fact, my house was one of the first to be burned down."
In May 1992, a month after Serb rebels declared war on the
Bosnian Government by shelling Sarajevo, Mladic watched the
house he shared with his brother in the Sarajevo borough of
Pofalici go up in flames.  Questioned about the two-year
pounding of Sarajevo by heavy Serb guns and other acts of brute
aggression against Bosnian civilians by Serb forces, Mladic
lists brutalities committed by the other side. "Croats in March
1992 began a war of terror against Serb civilians from the
Kupres Plateau up to Doboj," he says. (War in Croatia between
the Serbs and the Croats broke out in 1991.) "They began a
policy of genocide against Serbs in Samac, Modrica and Denenta,
the Neretva valley up to Mostar. In June and July, Muslims
burned down more than 100 Serbian villages along the Drina."  By
the time Mladic was made commander of the Serbian army in Bosnia
in May 1992, Serbian militias-capitalizing on their overwhelming
military superiority --had already conducted a vast "ethnic
cleansing" campaign, driving hundreds of thousands of Muslims
from their homelands over a seven-week period. Mladic was not
given full authority over the widely scattered militias until a
year ago, but the "cleansing" operations have gone on. His role
in the subsequent actions is not clear.  An officer who served
with Mladic at the front recalls that Mladic prevented his
soldiers from executing Muslim prisoners of war, once during
Serb offensives on Mount Igman, south of Sarajevo, in the summer
of 1993, and again at Majevica, near Tuzla, last spring.
According to a recently released Croat P.O.W., after Mladic's
visit to a prison in a Serb held area of Sarajevo last March,
conditions for the 430 Muslim and Croat prisoners of war
"improved greatly."  Of late, Mladic has been under attack not
only in Washington but also in Belgrade. The latest
international peace plan for Bosnia calls on Mladic and the
other Bosnian Serb leaders to give up control of a third of the
territory they have seized. The plan has been accepted by the
Muslim-dominated Bosnian Government and Bosnia's Croats, but the
Bosnian Serbs have rejected it. In response, the international
community early last month issued renewed threats of harsher
economic sanctions against Yugoslavia (now comprising Serbia and
Montenegro), until then the Bosnian Serbs' sole supporter. Faced
with such threats against Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic,
President of Serbia, warned Mladic and the Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic that rejection of the peace plan would result
in a severing of political and economic ties. The general's
retort was to the point: "If you do that, I'll bring the war to
your doorstep!" Announcing the cutoff of links to the rebels on
Aug. 4, Milosevic described the Bosnian Serb leaders as "war
profiteers" who were "insane with political ambitions and greed."

MLADIC'S FIRST NAME, Ratko, is a diminutive of Ratimir (War or
Peace) or Ratislav (War of Slavs). Ratko is a name typically
given a male baby in wartime. The general, 51, refuses to be
identified in any way with the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, created in April 1992 as an independent and
multi-ethnic state and recognized by the United States and the
European Community.  "I was born in what was called Old
Herzegovina," he says, referring to a strip of mostly
mountainous territory that was an ancient Serbian dukedom.
"Bosnia and Herzegovina was an artificial creation of the
Communist system and before that in the Austrian Empire. We
Serbs reject the term 'Bosnia.' We are Serbs and we know who we
are."  Yet being a Serb did not play a critical role in Mladic's
life until he was 48. In the 1991 Yugoslav census, the last
before the old federation collapsed, he listed his nationality
as Yugoslav, not Serb. He was in many respects a quintessential
Yugoslav, born of parents who had joined the Communist-led
partisans to fight German invaders and their Croatian henchmen,
the Ustasa. The mottoes of the partisans of Josip Broz Tito were
"Death to Fascism! Freedom to the People!" and "Brotherhood and
Unity!" Mladic's father, Nedja, died fighting the Fascist
Croatian Ustasa in 1945. Other Serbian partisans died in combat
against Muslim Ustasa, still others against Serbian royalists
called Chetniks. Of the 1.7 million Yugoslavs killed during
World War II, 1 million were victims of the civil war that raged
within the larger conflict.  Tito constructed his Yugoslavia as
a delicately balanced mechanism designed to prevent a resumption
of the ethnic slaughter among the South Slavs. Until his death
in 1980, his party, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and
the Yugoslav People's Army held the federation together. In its
ability to be independent of the Soviet Union, its relative
openness and material wealth (made possible by generous Western
loans), Yugoslavia was the envy of Eastern Europe. But after
Tito's death the country gradually unraveled. The party
disintegrated in 1990, the army in 1991.  At 15, Ratko Mladic
completed studies at an army school on the outskirts of
Belgrade. He graduated from the nation's military academy in
1965 and joined the Communist Party. His initial postings in
Europe's fourth largest army were in Macedonia, where he
commanded a platoon, then a tank battalion, then a brigade. In
January 1991, with the clouds of civil war already gathering, he
was promoted to deputy commander of the army corps in the
province of Kosovo, where the population is more than 90 percent
ethnic Albanian.  Six months later, as the federation of six
republics crumbled amid the secessions of Croatia and Slovenia,
Mladic received a call from the high command in Belgrade. Could
he make his way north to Croatia, where fighting had broken out
between Croatian militias and the Yugoslav army? 'They asked
what I thought," he recalls. "I said I didn't have to think
about it--just about the means to do it." He left three days
later by helicopter for Knin, the center of a Serbian uprising
in the Krajina region against the breakaway Croatian nationalist
authority. There he was soon given command of the army corps,
with the rank of colonel.  Like many of his fellow officers,
Mladic was still devoted to the preservation of a federal and
multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Both Croatia and Slovenia had declared
but not yet achieved independence. Bosnia and Herzegovina--a
miniature Yugoslavia in its mixture of Slavic Muslims, Serbs and
Croats--teetered between continued association with the
federation and some degree of independence. "At the time, I
never considered that we couldn't have a common life," Mladic
says. "We were all still captivated by that united life. But a
man is formed by the events he undergoes."  A gradual
transformation of Mladic's vocabulary can be seen in a
seven-part interview that appeared early this year in the
Belgrade weekly Nin. In the early sections, he speaks of Croats
as Croats. But when he talks about his battles with the Croats
in 1991-92 he refers atavistically to them as Ustasa. What
Mladic found in Krajina was a military man's nightmare. Army
command was breaking down as senior officers suddenly reverted
to their Croatian or Slovenian origin, wavered or went over to
the other side. A hastily formed Croatian national guard fought
a hastily assembled Serbian militia. Civilians were uprooted
amid atrocities in villages of mixed populations. Army garrisons
were blockaded.  Mladic's first question was: "Who is the
enemy?" His answer to himself and his troops: "First, the enemy
is anyone who shoots at our soldiers, cuts off their water and
electricity,provokes, blockades."

IN THE CROAT-SERB FIGHTING of 1991, Mladic moved with a
combination of audacity and guile that astonished his opponents.
Before new uniforms and insignia made the various sides
distinguishable, he traveled across the lines in mufti, using
identification papers of Croat officers he had known. Once, when
he was posing as Col.Stjepan Fazlijan, a Croatian militiaman
spotted his large ring and stopped him, saying, "You're not
Stjepan. You're Col.Ratko Mladic. You're dangerous. We should
liquidate you."  "I was uncomfortable," Mladic recalls. He
flashed an identity card belonging to Fazlijan and persuaded the
militiaman he was the Croat. "I told him  Mladic was really
dangerous and ought to be liquidated."  Then, in August 1991,
Mladic led troops to liberate a Serb army barracks near Vrlika.
The road was blocked by a bus rigged with more than 70 pounds of
explosives. An engineering unit was unable to defuse the bombs.
But Mladic, watched by reporters and cameramen, entered the bus
and cut the detonator wires.  He was promoted to general in
April 1992 after he successfully--and ruthlessly, say his
critics--consolidated Serbian positions in Krajina. Soon
thereafter, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence and
Bosnian Serb leaders searched for a commander to prosecute their
war aims. Nikola Koljevic, the Shakespeare scholar turned
politician who is vice president of the self-declared Bosnian
Serb republic, remembers: "We didn't know Mladic. But then we
read about him in a Croatian newspaper that said, 'Mladic is no
social worker.' We decided, That's the guy we need." In May
1992, Mladic was transferred from the Yugoslav army to the newly
constituted Bosnian Serb forces.  By his own account, Ratko
Mladic is a student of Hannibal, Alexander the Great and Carl
von Clausewitz. But over the last three years, in battle after
battle, he has shown his belief in the doctrine of concentrated
force espoused by Heinz Guderian, the German panzer general:
Klotzen, nicht Kleckern! --    "Smash! Don't sprinkle!" Mladic's
commands to his artillery units around Sarajevo included:
"Roast!" "Pound them senseless!" (Some would argue that what the
Bosnian Serbs have been doing from the hills around Sarajevo
hardly involves military skill and is tantamount to shooting at
sitting ducks.)  "The dominant shape of armed conflict for me is
attack," says Mladic. "I have an offensive character, and that's
acceptable to the high command of the army of the Republic of
Serbians." In mid-June, a Bosnian Government offensive cracked
Serbian lines on the southern slopes of Mount Ozren. It was an
effort by Bosnian forces to secure a vital road link between
Sarajevo and Tuzla, a Muslim-majority enclave. But in a sudden
pincer movement the Serbs retook the salient, killing--according
to United Nations officials--close to 1,000 Government troops.
Mladic eats and sleeps among his soldiers, whom he often leads
into battle in an armored vehicle. Initially he toured his
nearly 800 miles of front lines by helicopter, but that stopped
last year in compliance with a flight ban imposed by the United
Nations. "I like to go on foot," he says. "On foot, soldiers are
at their best." In his underground headquarters about 40 miles
northeast of Sarajevo, he sleeps on an army cot.  Mladic can be
hotheaded. Last year when the United States and the European
Community proposed air strikes against Serbian positions, he
threatened to unleash terrorist bombers on Washington and
London. Radovan Karadzic, president of the self-proclaimed
Srpska Republic, sharply reprimanded him for his "idiotic and
irresponsible statement."  On March 11, Gajo Petkovic, the
retired editor of the monthly magazine People's Army, wrote a
blistering attack on Mladic in a Belgrade magazine. Calling the
general "conceited," a "cynic and a sadist," and accusing him of
being "carried away by rage and brutality," Petkovic asserted
Mladic had "undoubted responsibility for the crimes of members
of the army he led." That night, Petkovic wrote in a subsequent
article, Mladic called him from Pale and threatened him: 'You'll
get yours soon. You'll remember who Ratko Mladic is." Mladic
denies having made the threat.  That was not the end of that
episode. On March 24, Mladic's daughter, Ana, a 23-year-old
medical student, committed suicide in Belgrade. Her friends said
it was because she had become distraught after reading the
Petkovic attack on her father.  With his wife, Bozana, and their
son--both of whom live in Pale--Mladic went to Belgrade to
attend the funeral at the Serbian Orthodox Church in the
Topcider Cemetery. Brought up a Communist and atheist, Mladic
placed coins in front of an icon; at graveside, he kissed a
candle, lit it and crossed himself.

RATKO MLADIC IS SERVING a self-proclaimed state that aims
eventually to merge with a larger Serbia. Until Aug. 4, when
Milosevic imposed his embargo against the Bosnian Serbs, Pale
drew oil and gasoline from Serbia. (Officials in Pale now say
they have enough fuel reserves to wage a full-scale war for four
months.) Bosnian Serb army uniforms have a Velcro patch on the
breast pocket so that the Srpska Republic coat of arms can be
attached or removed.  Whether or not their self-styled republic
is transitory, the Bosnian Serbs are determined to have their
way in the Bosnian conflict. On a recent day, fighters along the
front lines facing Gorazde, Sarajevo and the region north of
Tuzla were openly defiant. In a log-lined bunker called Little
Paradise, a machine-gunner named Dule echoed Mladic when he gave
his reason for going to battle: 'We're defending our homes."
Every few minutes dum-dum bullets from Muslim snipers popped in
the elm branches above the bunker--high-velocity 5.56-millimeter
rounds that are the latest in infantry warfare. This day, the
Serbs did not fire back. Then came a shout from a Muslim trench:
"Hey, Cedo!"--a diminutive for Serb nationalists. Dule yelled
back: 'What do you want, Komsija?" Komsija means "little
neighbor." This is, after all, a war of neighbors.  There are
other surprises at the front. Women are part of the combat
units, as are volunteers from Russia, Greece, the United States
and Canada. And the Bosnian Serbs have developed new weapons,
they say. Mladic calls one of them "the needle"--a
state-of-the-art adaptation of a surface-to-air missile that
lets the heatseeking guidance system distinguish between an
attack plane's jet engines and the flares it drops as decoys.
The missile was used to down a British fighter-bomber during the
heavy fighting around Gorazde in April.  More often than not,
Mladic has accepted the political lines laid down initially by
his superiors in Belgrade and subsequently by his superiors in
Pale. In 1991 he was ordered not to seize the coastal cities of
Zadar and Sibenik, which would have split Croatia, although he
claims his forces could have done it in a matter of hours then
and "in a day or two" now. Similarly, in spring 1993, he bowed
to higher authorities fearful of Western military intervention
and refrained from seizing the Muslim enclaves of Srebrenica and
Zepa along the Drina valley. He stepped back again from Gorazde
in April.  But cede to the Muslims land his 80,000 troops
conquered? "I would never order my units to retreat," he says
emphatically. "I wouldn't do it if I had had one million lives
and had to lose them all. Only an army that is defeated
retreats."  That same conviction motivated him to defy Karadzic
and the entire international community in May 1993 when he
opposed the Vance-Owen peace plan for ending the Bosnian
conflict. The general's 45-minute speech persuaded the Bosnian
Serbs' assembly in Pale to reject that plan. Now, with Pale
politicians unable to accept the latest peace plan, with
President Clinton giving them until Oct. 15 to accept it or face
a lifting of the arms embargo against the Bosnian Government,
which is eager to regain more territory, prolonged war is
virtually guaranteed.  This would almost certainly mean renewed
fighting by the Bosnian Serbs and possibly a full scale attack
on Sarajevo. (The Serbian bombardment of the capital ended in
February when a NATO ultimatum forced the withdrawal of heavy
weaponry to points beyond a 12.4 mile radius of the city.) Heavy
fighting could prompt large-scale air strikes by NATO planes, a
lifting of the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslim forces and the
withdrawal of United Nations peacekeepers from Bosnia.  "Our
commitment to peace is not a sign of weakness," says Mladic. "We
have shown who we are and what we are. We take measures not to
be surprised. I'm ready for them anywhere."